Rounds have grown into squares.......

I have been beavering away, working on my granny circles to make them into granny squares.................

What do you think?

I've only actually transformed 20 so far, but I'm pretty happy with how its looking.  Anyway must get back to circles and squares now.

My First Granny Square Blanket

I have made a start on what should be a long term crochet project, but at the moment I am really enjoying it. So its moving along a little quicker than expected, but I'm sure my pace will slow soon if not from being crocheted out, then from my hands giving up on me.

I spent about 2 weeks looking around the web for inspiration and ideas and you will see I have been very much inspired by According to Matt - Glorious Granny Greatness!!! and he was inspired by Attic24 - Summer garden granny square. I do not intend to be a copy cat I would like to add some of my own additions like perhaps some African flowers, so watch this space as the granny square grows.


This is what I have done so far. These are just the middles, I will still have to do the third colour and then then the fourth bordering colour. So lots to be getting on with!!

So 40 partly down only 360 to go....

Origami

Ahhhh Origami, this was one I decided to try myself without outside influences.

I was having a browse around the internet for who knows what. I like to look at other peoples crafts and then try them or drool over them. So during one of these aimless browses I came across Origami flowers and wanted to give it a go. I managed to find what looked like quite an easy flower to make.
At the time the only  paper I had on hand was, the Argos catalogue which it turns out is pretty funky, and a stack of Post it notes which are pretty good as they are already cut to into squares. The downside of Post it notes is the sticky bit is sometime in the wrong place and can make things a bit fiddly. Although it is a good way to just give Origami a go with out buying all that expensive "origami paper".

So this was the result

First I went small using the Post Its
Then......

They were so easy to make I thought  I would make a bouquet for my  mum

I mounted them on an old pen
and yes this may be my desk at work shhhh  it was a slow day! 

I found another instruction for flowers made from dollar bills, which I conveniently had in my purse from a previous holiday.

I then sent a picture to my boyfriend suggesting any future
bouquets he wanted to give me, should be made up of the rare dollar flower 

Then I came across another flower on a flicker page, it looked so pretty. I believe it was meant to be a cherry blossom but when I looked up Origami cherry blossom instructions, I kept getting different looking flowers coming up. I looked at more picture on this persons flicker page they had done some amazing work. My issue was they had only done partial instructions for things, or none at all. This was driving me insane, I was having my very own battle with this person, although this was all in my own head as they of course had know idea I was a crazy person, who had decided that they had done this on purpose, so no one else could make thing as pretty as them. Any way after many many hours researching, I had come up with my own way of making the cherry blossom to look like theirs. I felt like I had won the battle even though I couldn't show it to them and say "in your face, I figured it out without your help". I appreciate I sound like a crazy person!

Now mine is not as amazing as theirs because I used post its and they used really pretty paper. 

This was all in November 2011, I didn't make any notes or take any pictures along the way so I have know idea how to make this cherry blossom again. So I guess my internet nemesis has won the war in the end.  

In December I decided I wanted to make some pretty Origami Christmas Decorations. 

So I mad a few kusudama which are theses 

I made these is a few different colours and it took forever. They do look nice hanging around the house. The other thing I attempted to make was, a sort of rainbow coloured origami star mobile. I made what felt like a million tiny little stars, and began stringing them up on a circular piece of card. This took what felt like days to do and I didn't even get it finished.

 I hung this up like this, ready to come back to the next day. When I came back it was all knotted up, very distressing! So I have not touched it since.

I really enjoyed Origami so I will come back to this craft again for sure.