Just Gabbin'

Well good evening or good morning, depending on where you are in the world! It's a couple of hours away from bedtime for me and as usual I'm shattered. I narrowly missed going to my gym class due to the heavy rain this evening (its lame I know). If the rain keeps on coming like it has for the past few days and I keep skipping the gym, I'll get so fat I'll have to be air-lifted into work.

So, what's been happening in the world of Micro G? I've been working away on the crochet blanket tonight and whilst at work today was quizzed about why I like to blog. People forget it's usually a personal thing and a hobby and often don't really understand bloggers' motivations. For me, well I enjoy meeting new people through blogs and Twitter, I also love learning about the technology behind it and like to keep friends and family up-to-date on my latest knitting and crochet projects, especially mum, "Hi mum!"
 
Mr brother takes a dim view of company Facebook sites and 'corporate' blogs and I have to admit, even though I'm not getting any younger myself, when I hear of men in their '50s gloating about how influential they are on Twitter, I can't help but smile wryly. Could social media be the new symptom of midlife crisis now that the banks have taken all our money and no one can afford to buy Porsches anymore?

I have plenty of other hobbies, too many really and I firmly believe blogging is way cooler than Facebook, or bragging about work or money (no one likes a bore).

Little by little I've been tinkering with my new blog site over the last couple of weeks and it's slowly starting to take shape now. I'm not sure how it's going to turn out but sometimes it's nice just to let your imagination run wild...

Finished Object: Knitted iPhone Cover

As my marathon effort to make a crochet blanket continues in the background, I thought I'd reveal how my iphone cover ended up. And here it is! My iphone and earphones fit snugly inside and I've wrapped the knitted square around one side again to form a separate pocket for the earphones, preventing the handset from getting scratched.

It's my first finished object completed using an acrylic mix yarn - Patons Beehive soft blend four ply, colour 02 (jade green). I originally intended to button it closed but, not wishing to 'guild the lilly', I think I like it as it is. As you can see, I chose to stitch it with the wrong side facing out to give it a less predictable look. Ad-libbing, this is my own design, not even a design really; I just adapted a practise square I knitted last year, et voila, an iphone cosy!

Afghan Hound

To my surprise, for the Commuter Crochet Challenge I completed two granny squares going to from work on a packed commuter train this week. It is not something I plan to repeat as it's a struggle to even get a seat on the train and even if you do, you barely have any elbow room for 'hooking'.

This afternoon I frogged the granny squares as I've decided that rather than make lots of itty bitty squares, I will instead just keep spiralling round to make a huge multi coloured rainbow blanket/ afghan. The plan is to change colours on each row and blend the colours from light in the centre, to dark around the edge. I'm calling this post Afghan Hound as I think this project will take me a while!

So what else has been happening? Well, spring has most definitely sprung now so yesterday hubby and I enjoyed a lovely evening in Brighton. If you've never had the pleasure of visiting Brighton yourself it's arguably the UK's most fashionable seaside town and has a kind of arty bohemian vibe. It's also a melting pot of youth sub cultures and was a popular haunt for Mods on Vespa scooters in the 1960s. If you're visiting the UK from overseas any time soon I recommend you visit Brighton, it's less than an hour from London and is very cool. True to form, Amazon promptly delivered my new Nikon point and shoot within two days and I managed to pap this crimson vision - the sun setting behind the Victorian pier that once was.

For the record, the other pier (not pictured but located behind me when I took this photo) remains a big attraction in Brighton; a hive of activity, it was teaming with visitors on Saturday.

Baby Blanket Goes Under Cover

My second ever knitting project, you may have caught sight of this in my finished object coffee cosy post last week. As I created this zigzag baby blanket before I started the blog, I felt it was a shame not to give it a mention. Although due to its size it took me a while to knit, I was pretty pleased with the result at the time, so much so, I couldn't face giving it away. The purple, cream, grey and light blue colourway really works, don't you think?

Missoni Resort 2012 collection, image from thriftfab.com

I've also always been a fan of the distinctive zigzag pattern Italian fashion house Missoni so often incorporates into its range. Even as a super novice at the time, I got on ok with this pattern and would definitely knit another one.
Special thanks to Debbie Orr for providing such a lovely free knitting pattern via Ravelry. I used Debbie Bliss double knitting yarns for the blanket, the sea grass chest is from John Lewis and I picked up the cowhide rug many years ago in Sydney, Australia.

Gotta Love Croydon

For years, Croydon in south London has been the subject of much ridicule. Despite incubating the talent of two world famous supermodels in the '90s, and hosting an efficient transport interchange and an IKEA superstore; the densely populated metropolis is more widely associated with featureless concrete commercial buildings and teen mums. To its credit and to my surprise, I discovered today that Croydon has a crochet square named after it! And here it is, papped nonchalantly on its creator's fair laminate flooring. Gotta love Croydon.

Mustering all my patience and courage, I plan to have a stab at a similar afghan granny square soon. Will keep you posted.

Before I go, here's a snap of mum's hat. It turned out lovely, don't you think? She's more of an old skool knitter so I don't think her pattern came from cyberspace. However, I'm sure if readers were keen to replicate it, someone is bound to have added a similar pattern to Ravelry's patterns section.