On the hook, Off the hook

This week has been pleasantly boring. I've been determined to have a quiet time after the madness of birthday/Easter/deadline in the last few weeks. So I've been knuckling down and getting the house clean, done a spot of baking and this avo I'm going to do some boring errands in the sunshine. And perhaps a spot of chazzing, too! 

So in this quiet period I've been doing some haberdashery raiding, stash building and filling my head with stitchy ideas. 

I couldn't resist buying these balls of Stylecraft Special DK for a boy blanket- I'm hoping to share a tutorial on Free Pattern Friday so I can show you what it's going to be! I am loving the new shades in this popular acrylic range- the petrol blue, spicy orange and mustard gold are just perfect with the classic sherbert blue and silver grey. Mmmmmmm colours. I don't often buy acrylic any more, but I just love the range of colours in Stylecraft. And they're machine washable- essential for little boys! 

Another naughty purchase from The Village Haberdashery. I fell in love with this Elizabeth Olwen for Cloud 9 Fabrics 'grey abbey' collection, and I'm planning on making another Colette Sorbetto top with it. With a mustard collar squeeeaaaallll! This beautiful organic fabric is just some of Cloud9's amazing collection. I could happily give a home to all of it. I first saw Elizabeth's beautiful surface pattern design in Frankie magazine a couple of months ago, and I'm totally in love. More on that another time, I think. And these rose buttons? Well, they're destined for my current WIP...

A beautiful view of my geek chic cardi in progress! I'm making very slow progress on this; I realised on Sunday that I had been using the wrong size hook for one of the front pieces and back piece. Cursing, frogging and some measuring happened. Then I realised that actually my tension was spot on with a 4mm hook and I only needed to frog the first front piece I'd made. So this will be not be finished this week! Ah well. It will be worth it in the end. I have some emerald green wool I've had stashed away for ages, which would also look fab in this pattern. 

Yesterday I decided to use some of my growing haberdashery collection and give a vintage shirt dress a new look. I removed the chipped mother-of-pearl buttons, and unpicked a tab detail on the pockets. I then hand-stitched this red ric-rac onto the pockets and around the sleeves, and added this beautiful french satin ribbon that I bought from Liberty about two years ago. I also stitched some red vintage buttons onto the front. And I'm really pleased with it! 

In other news, I've recently joined Bloglovin'. And I'm addicted. If you're a member then please follow me on bloglovin', and spread the word! I'm so pleased there's an app so I can read my favourite blogs on my phone. I don't have an iPad or fancy camera, and have found it difficult to make the time to upload pictures from my iPhone onto my laptop to blog, and I so often don't have time to catch up with reading all my faves as well. I can't believe it's taken me so long to find out what bloglovin' is! So, yay. 

I'm hoping to make time to cut my pattern pieces for my next Sorbetto tonight. Whoop! So there we have it- some projects on the hook, some off. But always on my mind!

Happy hookery and stitchery chums

xxx