Blooming Marvellous!

Hello lovelies! How are you all doing? 

I'm very well, thanks for asking :-) 

I'm feeling rather sparky this morning. I'm enjoying the fact that the snow has melted from the windows and the sun is blaring into the apartment. 

It looks as if I'm not the only one that is enjoying spot of sun. A few of my floral friends have popped by to say 'hello'.

The Narcissus bulbs that have been sat on my shelf were longing for a little light. 

They seem to have had a sudden growth spurt over the past few days. This morning they finally opened to bathe in the sunshine! 

It may sound a little silly but I was extremely excited to see the appearance of these little yellow flowers. They were just sat on my kitchen shelf acting as if they had been there all along.

Nothing nicer than having little splashes of colour about the home. 

The newely flowered Narcissus complimented the tulips and roses that were already spread around the apartment. 

Now I know you've seen countless photos of flowers, but I couldnt resist taking some pictures. It's also nice to have a little project of focussing on a specific topic (in this case, my flowers) and play around with all of the features on my camera. 

I do love taking photographs! I guess without realising it, photography has turned into a little hobby of mine. I suppose it comes hand in hand with the blogging, but the photography and sharing of the things I see around me is definitely the favourite part of my blog.

OOOOH isn't that a pretty colour!

BRIGHT AND FRESH....BRIGHT AND FRESH!!!

Flowers are beautiful in shape and structure, but its the colours that get me! 

If you're ever stuck on a crafty project and are not sure which colours to use, what goes with what? Have a little search on the web for different flowers. 

Take a look at all of the amazing colour combinations and transpose those colours to your project! It's a sure way of successful colour sequenceing. 

As they say.....Nature makes no mistakes! :-) 

OOOOH LOOK!!! My Orchid also has some little buds! I was positive that I'd killed it! 

You're surely going to be seeing some more snaps of this little orchid once it flowers :-)

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Striped Tunisian Cushion

Over the past few weeks I've been having one hell of a swell time playing around with different crafty techniques. I've started to knit, tried my hand at some needle felting and now I find myself exploring some of the other routes that crochet has to offer. 

I've been wanted to experiment with Tunisian crochet for a little while now. When I saw some large afghan hooks for sale in the local yarn store, I just had to buy one and play around with this different method of crochet. 

I loved the look of the Afghan hook, long and slender with a perfect little heart on top. 

I'm sure many of you have already dabbled in other forms of crochet but this was a totally new concept for me. I only discovered a few weeks ago that this technique even existed and that you could buy different hooks or cabled hooks in order to help with this technique. How sheltered am I?!

I did a spot of research on the net and found out how this form of crochet works. Rather than working all of the stitches individually like "regular" crochet, you work ALL of the stitches onto the hook and then work all of them off. (I hope that makes sense?) 

I had a play around with it and learned to do the simple "afghan stitch". It created a very neat looking stitch that was thick and looked similar to something knitted. 

I thought I'd persevere with this stitch and decided to use up the Stylecraft DK I had left over from my last granny square blanket.
I created a neat looking striped swatch that made my heart feel fluttery!
It was interesting to see the different characteristics the stitch had. Not only did it create a very thick material, but the material also curled in on itself. I did a google search and apparently the curling of the material is totally normal. It's due to the way the stitches pull and can be correcting by blocking the at the end. PHEEEW!

Before long I had glorious piece of bright and bold material that had a random mix of Summery colours.  OOOOH I do love stripes!

I sewed in all of the ends.

Then admired the very neat perfectly formed colour changes that this stitch allowed me to create.

Here is the wrong side to the swatch. It looks very much like It's been knitted, doesn't it?

I was so very happy with how my swatch turned out that I decided to keep crocheting and turn it into something. A little striped cushion sounded like the perfect option. 

I decided to keep changing colour randomly utill my swatch was big enough to wrap around a cushion. 

I bought a lovely bright zip 

and sewed it to either end of my rectangular swatch of material.

I then sewed the sides together making a beautifully bright cushion cover ready to be stuffed.

I placed a pillow inside and TA DAH! Something bright and happy that makes me feel jolly and rather content just looking at it!

Stripes make me feel a certain way! I'm not sure how they make me feel?.. Just different to dots or solid blocks of colour. I like the feeling!

It matches perfectly with my granny square blanket

and seems rather at home with the other cushions!

It's a very happy cushion!

I really enjoyed playing around with my first Tunisian project. It's definitely a technique I'm going to continue to explore. How could I not when it creates such delightful result!

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