Amigurumi dinosaur and currently reading

Yesterday I finished my first attempt at amigurmi crochet.  I followed this pattern to make a dinosaur for my 2 year old nephew.

It’s not perfect but I’m pleased that I have made it. I think I needed to use a smaller hook, as the wool is only 4 ply and you can see on the arms, the stitches are stretched too wide (or perhaps I’ve just over stuffed them). I also noticed when I was linking up the pattern that I had attached the legs to the body the wrong way round! Never the less I am happy with this dinosaur and hope my nephew will like it too.

When I first started learning to crochet before Christmas I struggled with the magic ring technique needed to do amigurumi but after completing my blanket I tried again and found it much easier. Obviously all the crochet practice made all the difference. Now I just need to decide what to make next.

Last week I finished reading When god was a rabbit by Sarah Winman. I can’t say I was that impressed with the book to be honest but I liked it enough to read it through to the end (an improvement on the book I read in February). I went to the library on saturday and found a few books that were on my list of books to read and dove straight in to the first wife by Emily Barr. At my current rate of one a month these will keep me going for some time! I’m hoping though that I will find more time to read with a selection of books that I can’t wait to read on hand. When I signed up to good reads last month, I joined the 2012 challenge and set my goal as 12 books.

2012 Reading Challenge

Claires365hasread 2 books toward her goal of 12 books.

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2 of 12 (16%)

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Linking up with our creative spaces and finish it friday (finished too late for this weeks yarn along).

Photos from my weekend

Here’s the reason I don’t do “scenes from my weekend” posts regularly, its Wednesday already and I’ve only just finished editing the photos. The weather was so beautiful this weekend (unseasonally warm) and I took a few photo that I am pleased with so I wanted to share them here.

Saturday was mostly shopping and housework but I did find time to bake a cake and some bread.

Sunday was another glorious day. We were up early as my husband was running a half marathon. After a morning sat in the countryside watching the runners cross the finish line, my family came over to visit us. We went for a late sunday lunch at our favorite local pub, followed by back to ours for some of that cake I baked on saturday (since it was my mum’s birthday on monday). All in all a pretty nice weekend. Looking forward to the next one already.

Crochet blanket complete

Do you remember the blanket I started between Christmas and new year? well I finally completed it last weekend.

It’s now sat on the end of our sofa just waiting to be used on these chilli March evenings.

It measures 1.5 meters by 1.3 meters. The red and cream stripes are double crochet and the grey mostly single crochet, with a few rows in the middle being double crochet (where I used a slightly thicker yarn). I did not follow a pattern. I started by chaining to the width of the blanket I wanted and then crocheting stripes of different widths and colours, trying to keep the colour changes and size of each stripe random.

At the moment I feel I am not reading enough books (too many blogs but not enough books!). I spent too long in February trying to get in to a book that I didn’t dislike but equally there was nothing making me want to pick the book up so consequently I didn’t. This morning I decided to sign up to good reads (you can find me here). I’ve added all the books that I can remember having read (over the last 5 years possibly longer) so that I can get recommendations based on these. However I have a problem remembering books I have read before so it is by no means all of them. There is also the option to set yourself a challenge of reading x number of books in 2012. I’ve started low with just 12 books this year. I love that I can keep a record of books I want to read and also that it will give me personalised recommendations based not only on the books I have read but those I have put on my to read list. Does anyone else use good reads?

Also linking up with our creative spaces.