It's all gone a bit Pete Tong

Visiting blogland is tricky right now.
 

The place I have worked at for 19 years is closing.
 

It is playing on my mind a bit.
 

I am very busy at work.

I am pre-occupied at home.

Sometimes it seems like a great opportunity.

Sometimes I feel like I never want to work again.
 

I'm lucky in that we no longer have a mortgage to pay. 
 

It is not the case for many of our employees and I worry about them, all 101 of them.

However, I did find a CV that I wrote about two years ago and it looks pretty good.  It needs updating but thank goodness I actually wrote one then because actually putting one together now, when my head is a shed, would be hard indeed.

It is times like this that I am thankful for crochet and knitting.  The counting and rhythm of these pass-times is just enough to take me away from all this.

Knitting a Family Tradition

I wanted to write a little bit about my current knitting project as there was a special reason for this project, which is to do with family.

My Dad's family have always lived abroad, they moved to New Zealand before I was born.  His Mum, Dad, two brothers and two Aunts all emigrated.  Obviously my Dad didn't go and I'm speculating that was because he had just got married and had a good job.

So we didn't see much of his family, in fact I never met my Grandad.  But, Grandma would come over from time to time and when she did she would knit things for me and my sister.  I still have a poncho and some of the dolls clothes she knitted for me.

My Great Aunt Lily, Grandma's sister, was the person who taught me to knit and crochet. 

Earlier this year my Grandma reached 100 years old. 

This is Grandma at her party at the retirement village where she lived in Australia.  My Dad and my Step-Mum went over and she had a great time surrounded by her family and friends.  She was even in the local paper.

Unfortunately not long after her birthday her health deteriorated and she died in September.  She had a long and happy life and so I am not sad, only sad that I didn't know her better.

Not long after she died my cousin, who I have never met, gave birth to a baby boy and so I decided that I would like to knit a blanket for the baby.  It seemed like a nice thing to do and I felt it gave me some connection to the family and particularly to my Grandma.

As the blanket is nearly finished I contacted my Aunt and told her what I was doing and asked where to send the blanket to. 

My Aunt was thrilled as she doesn't knit and told me Grandma had got the ladies together where she was living and they used to knit constantly, beanies for the troops in Afghanistan, items for the local children's hospital and baby items galore.  But my favourite of all; she liked to crochet "knee blankets for the elderly".

You've got to love the spirit of a woman at 100 years old making items for the elderly, apparently it was said without irony as she never saw herself as old. 

I'm hoping I have some of her spirit and humour when I get to that age.........

Colourful Crochet and some Knitting

Apologies for the quality of the photos but here are some of the

items that have been on my hook....... and needles

 

 

My Granny Stripe and the start of my crochet journey

 http://attic24.typepad.com/

 

 

My colourful squares car blanket.

 

My Elmer squares baby pram blanket using the pattern

from this lovely blog www.littletinbird.co.uk

I love the colours of this and the best thing was I didn't have

to think 'random' because it was rainbow stripes.

 

My ripple baby cot blanket, again using Lucy's pattern 

(but not the coastal colours, just what was in my stash)

I should have taken a photo of this in good light but the baby

 was imminent so I had to get it packed up and handed over.

 

My chunky sampler picnic blanket which is still a WIP...

Inspired by Little Woollie blog   http://littlewoollie.blogspot.co.uk/



And finally my knitted baby blanket.

I made the pattern up.

 

No reason for this other than I am showing off...... there, I've said it.