Makings - Crochet Christmas Character Afghan Progress

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Well it seems like October has flown by as fast as the later months of the year tend to.
 
Hasn't the weather been beautiful?
 
I think our September and October weather has more than made up for the awful summer weather. It still remains mild with us and although it isn't sunny every day, most days I have been able to sit out in the garden for a little time while Fraser plays around outside. Without a jacket! Although I have resorted to snuggling up with my lovely Nordic Shawl sometimes. I think I must have looked quite the granny on Friday afternoon when my husband came home from work a little earlier than usual to find me sitting out in the back garden, shawl round my shoulders and working on my crochet!
 
Since I last had a chance to post on here we have spent a lovely week away on holiday in Argyll, on the west coast of Scotland. It's where my husband was brought up and so he always maintains that it is the most beautiful part of the country! We stayed in a little log cabin by the shores of Loch Awe and, like I said, the weather was beautiful. We were able to eat outdoors most days, the boys spent hours throwing stones into the loch, and we had a camp fire in the fire pit beside our cabin most nights with toasted marshmallows and our first ever s'mores!
Our cabin also had no dishwasher, washing machine or wifi and since it was in the middle of the countryside there was no 3G coverage either so we really were able to unplug from everything. I think that's why I've been offline for so long. I've just been gradually getting back online and trying to spend as little time online as possible but rather continue enjoying this beautiful time of year.
 
Of course the other reason that I could have remained offline for so long is that it took me so long to catch up on all the washing and ironing that we returned from our holiday with!
 
The other main thing that has happened since I last posted is that this little man turned two.
 
 
That was him dressing up at a power station we visited on holiday. Cuteness overload!
 
In my head I've been thinking of him as 2 for some months now. He just seems to have been more like a 2 year old in his understanding of what's going on around him and just how, well, sensible I suppose, he is. I'm sure it comes of having older brothers to follow.
 
He understands everything we say to him, in both Gaelic and English, and he has quite a few words, although at this stage they are still probably only recognisable to us as a family and someone else wouldn't really make sense of them. Like, his word for Calum is 'Awa' and David is 'day-day', which isn't too far out as David calls himself Dave Dave to Fraser. I would say that more of his words are Gaelic than English at the moment, which was true of the other boys at this age too and makes sense given that he spends all day with me. I have heard many people say that boys take longer to talk than girls, and I also think that with our boys being bi-lingual they take a little longer to talk properly but the plus of that is that when they do start coming out with words and sentences they have twice as many as children who only speak one language!
 
Isn't language development so interesting? Actually all child development is!
 

Anyway, moving on to the actual title of this post, my Christmas Character Afghan, inspired by Repeat Crafter Me.

 

While we were away on holiday I was able to complete two more squares, rudolf and frosty. That takes my total up to five now. With four to go.

 

 

 

 

 

I was chatting to the lady who runs the lovely little independent yarn shop near the boys' school recently and she too is making the blanket. I've never timed how long it takes to make a square but she reckoned it takes about 4-5 hours of work for one square. I'm lucky to get half an hour straight to crochet so you can see it's a long term project.

 

I haven't quite decided if I am going to make the rest of the squares as characters or make plain coloured squares to alternate with the characters I have done so far. Plain squares will work up much quicker than all the colour changes, the yarn twisting and untwisting and graph reading so I might go for that option.

 

I think, though, that I'm going to try and do a few more characters as they are just so cute!

 

And I think that's us all up to date now. Has everyone else been enjoying such a beautiful Autumn as us? And what about the rumours of a bad winter ahead? Who is looking forward to the alleged heavy snow? *puts hand up* :)

 

There's not one....

Monday 5 October 2015

....but TWO teenagers in the house now!

 

 
 
At the end of last week Calum turned 13.
His main present had some Where's Wally wrapping paper on it and before he opened it he wanted to find Wally.
Which he did.

 

 
As usual, there were a few eager onlookers when it was unwrapping time.
 

 

 
Despite thinking about it for days, Calum couldn't think of what he wanted his cake to look like. James (15) had some grand plans of how he could decorate it, but then it turned out that by the time the cake was baked - after a very hectic afternoon that included doing the weekly food shop - it was time for James to get himself packed and ready for Army Cadet weekend camp.
 
So in the end this was what I came up with. A very hastily iced and decorated cake while I made the dinner.
 

 

We had lots of sparklers on the cake, which caused great amusement as Fraser (1) tried over and over to blow them out but with no success. He had a lot of fun trying though.
 
Then he had more fun trying to get to the icing.
 

 

As he does every year, Calum had his best friend round for his birthday dinner, which this year he had requested would be Chicken Jalfrezzi. By the time we had the cake James had gone off to camp. We did keep him some cake for his return though.
 

 

Despite a busy weekend Calum still managed to build his Lego Bike Shop and Cafe, which has so many great little touches.
 

 

 
I particularly love the way the houses look...

 

 
...the bbq on the roof...

 

 
...the kitchen...

 

 
...the window boxes and outdoor lights...

 

..as well as lots more features.
 
Now that it's all built he has to find somewhere to keep it that little fingers can't get hold of it, as it is proving very tempting to them to have a wee go with it too!
 
As a final birthday celebration Calum went to the cinema with his Auntie Anna to watch Everest on Saturday evening. He has been joining her on her hillwalks for a while now and recently they completed his first Monroe climb. Which reminds me that he took some very good photos on that climb that I have been meaning to share.
 
He arrived home quite late on Saturday night and said that the movie was great. But very sad.
 
I had a feeling a movie about Everest might not be the happiest of stories but despite that he really enjoyed it.
 
However he has no plans to climb Everest in the future and is going to stick with hills and the easier Munroes for now. I wonder how many he will conquer in his 13th year?
 
 
 

 

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