A Donation and Yarn

My lovely friend Lisa of For the Love of Yarn is taking part in Race for Life this year (as she did last year) along with her equally lovely mum. She is raising money for Cancer Research UK. A charity which has a lot of meaning to most of us. I don't think I need to say why it is a charity close to my own heart. To try and raise awareness and of course raise more donations to this worthy cause Lisa has decided to include a giveaway. Every £2 you donate will mean that you have a chance of winning the yarn above. So head over to Lisa's Just Giving page and make a donation. Even the smallest of donation goes towards research into finding cures. Just remember to leave your name so that Lisa can enter you into the prize draw which ends at 8pm tonight.

Scottish Baby Shower

I'm not going to steal the thunder of my knitting groups blog. I just thought I would show you a very rare photo with me in it. Being the one usually taking the photo's I have been successful at avoiding the camera. Until now. So here is me presenting the lovely Lisa with her gift.

I can't take credit for the planning of this one. My friend Isabel came up with the idea of a Scottish themed baby shower. So you can see some of our Scottish goodies and our decorated table with irn bru kilts (am sure this isn't an official kilt). I can also tell you that those flags were used by my friend and her family to cheer on the athletes during the Games Road Race. If you want to see all the amazing things people made then head over to the group blog.

Lisa is the lovely lady who has runs For the Love of Yarn that I have been raving about over and over again. It was also her son who raised money for cancer research and I donated a pair of socks to the auction (did I mention that clever boy raised over £800). Well, the lady who had the winning bid likes purples and blues. It just so happened that Lisa had some of her hand dyed yarn in those colours. So I have this scrummy yarn on the pins.

You may have noticed that the Common Wealth Games have been and gone. I had wanted to be one of the volunteers but not really a good idea since it would coincide with my final placement. I also didn't watch much of it. Or any of it really. Even though I was riveted to the Olympics two years ago I found that I was just too tired or busy. So the extent of my excitement was seeing a lot of yarn bombing round near my sister's. A project that was done with school kids in time for the Games. I also have photo's of Clydes and other Games related decoration but they don't really fit in with a crafting blog.

I have nothing else to show you. To be honest I have been too tired to do much of anything on my days off. I have been concentrating on my final few weeks of my degree and that little project of job hunting. I have been reading craft pages and I still find myself on pinterest (although not quite as often). I have also been baking for my fellow nurses but as it's been more banana bread and my famous cookies I didn't think you would want to see yet more images of those.

Oh, which reminds me! Be prepared for some Great British Bake Off related posts. It's back and so far I am impressed with the contestants. Think it's going to be a good one.

Baking and it's not Banana Bread!

Yep, that's right. I attempted a recipe I hadn't tried before because I had actual time to pay attention to what I was doing. Banana bread I can now do in my sleep. It's an easy option that takes 10 minutes to have one in the oven and another waiting. When you have made dozens of them it gets a little boring. I was desperate to try something new. I have a few recipes on my iPad and the cherry cake seemed like the simplest. That is it took fewer ingredients.

The folks were away and I was entertaining my sister so it seemed like the perfect time. Plus, I love cherry cake and my sister is partial to it too.

While the recipe may not use many ingredients it certainly used up almost every dish in the house. At one point I had three different mixtures in three different bowls which had to be stirred together a bit at a time. Who in the world has time for that? I am not going to lie. I was very tempted to cheat and just shove it all together. However, when a recipe tells you to have eggs in one bowl, flour in another and sugar and butter in yet another there is a reason for it. It made it all light and fluffy. I am sure disaster would have struck had I went with my initial "lets just shove it all together and see what happens".  I am sure a cake I have made in the past used a similar method and I remember being impressed with the results then. Can't for the life of me remember what it was mind you.

You then place the rest of the cherries on top of the cake. Sounds bizarre, I know, but the mix rises and envelops those cherries. So also worth doing. The end result was might tasty. Not just my words but also the words of my sister. In fact she wants me to give up my nursing career to open a bakery (not going to happen). I got the recipe from Waterstones as an ecard. If you are looking for it though you will find it in "The Baker's Daughter" by Louise Johncox. Very easy to follow and I might have to add this book to my wish list.

As you saw from my last post the baby shower has been and gone. In fact mum to be is no longer mum to be. She had a beautiful little girl yesterday. The baby shower itself was a huge success. My crazy (but lovely) friend decorated the room and brought along some Indian foods. Soon to be grandmother had also cooked for the occasion. Both mother and daughter were dressed in traditional Indian clothing which my friends mum had made herself. Confused yet? It was a lovely event and you should head over to my knitting groups blog to see my friend (she was beautiful) and all the goodies our group made for her. 

In other news, my last piece of course work has been handed in. This means that I can relax a little. You would think I would have got my craft on as a result. The truth is I have been mostly sleeping or watching DVDs. I am struggling to settle on anything. Perhaps I don't feel right not having work to do. Anyway, this little tag is the only crafting I have done this past week and it took me far longer to do than it should have. Next week I will get back on operation baby shower 2.

Do you remember the charity event my friends little boy was having to raise money? His mum ran an auction event. Between that and his other fundraising activities he managed to raise over £850. It took him just two weeks to do. Now that's impressive and not surprisingly my friend is very proud of her wee boy. I did win some hand-dyed sock yarn on that auction. I love those colours and I plan to knit myself some socks with it. Whenever I get the chance to do that.

Meanwhile I thought I would leave you with some more images from my mum's garden. I've been looking after it this week so I think I deserve some of the credit (because watering it a couple of times is the same).

Love a Stripe!

After the dullness of a sock that should not have been dull you would think I would have been bored to tears by a basic sock. I am nothing if not fickle because I love it. As soon as I finished my poor gran's socks I cast on these. These are for my dad for Father's day. I really don't have a lot spare time to get them done but I don't think that will be a problem. I am loving my addition of stripes and as a result they are knitting up quickly even if they are man size. I am easily wooed by a stripe. I am thinking there will be a stripe pinterest post soon.
 

 Some of you know my mum and that she always has something on the pins. Her recent knitted item is this owl for me. I did not look through my mum's magazines and then hold this pattern in front of her until she agreed to knit it. Not at all. I also did not nag her and nag her and nag her. If she says otherwise she is telling porkies. This little pillow is actually meant to be a pyjama case. It knitted up too small for that and so my mum decided to lightly stuff it instead. I think he looks better as a pillow to be honest.

While shopping of yarn for my dad's socks I also picked up this pattern for a crochet throw. Cause I can follow crochet patterns now. Actually I would probably have picked it up anyway. It's just so pretty. I love the twirly stitching. DMC have brought out a range of cotton yarns (known for their cotton threads) and this is one of the patterns that have been brought out with it. I am not a huge fan of the colours but I would just substitute them. The back of the pattern contains a shade chart for the yarns which makes it easier to substitute. I have promised myself that I WILL make this for me.

I also picked up my very first quilting magazine. I bought it for the little hexies. I have saw people on instagram making these little hexies between other projects. I thought it would be a simple one for me to try. It's more complicated than I thought though. Most of the magazine is filled with lots of pretty images but it's all beyond my limited skills. Something for when I have more time to concentrate I think (whenever that will be).

I have also found a handy list tool. I love a list. I love post its. I love my academic diary filled with  lists and post its and I love my crafty filo fax. So of course I am going to love an app that combines the lot. So I have uploaded Evernote. I realise this has been around for a while and I am the last to hear about it. I have never been one to keep up to date with these things but man do I geek out with them when I do catch up. So as you can see from my few notebooks I have a fair mix of crafting, books and nursing. I have no doubt that will expand. There isn't much on there yet but I have been adding snapshots of inspirations from magazines, ideas for my blog and notes on the yarns and socks I am knitting. The downside is that you can't access them if you don't have the internet. So it's fine if I am at uni or at home or at my sisters. Not so fine anywhere else as my phone is rubbish and slow so I don't use the internet on it. This will change when I FINALLY upgrade.

One last thing before I go. This is an update on Callum's mission. He has breached his second target and it's going well. The auction for lots of crafting goodies is tomorrow at 8pm (that's UK time). So please check out For the Love of Yarn to bid for something. All the money is going to Cancer Reasearch UK. There are some crochet hooks that the kids designed on there too. As I mentioned before I am donating socks which I will make once placement is finished. There are loads of other fab things though. Sadly I am on night shift and so won't be able to bid. Gutted as there is a beautiful shawl and some lovely yarn on that list.

Restoring Faith

Taking some time out from crafting posts to tell you about my friends little boy. He is five years old and he is the sweetest little boy I have ever met. She has occasionally brought him along to our knitting group and he goes round everyone to see what they are working on and asks very polite questions about the projects. Just when you think he couldn't get any sweeter he did.

He is taking part in a race with his school. When he got home he said to his mum that he wanted to help raise pennies for charity so that sick people wouldn't be sick anymore. It would bring a tear to a glass eye. So Lisa has set up a Just Giving page for him and he is now raising money for Cancer Research UK. He is doing very well and his target has already had to be upped because he passed it.

If any of you have any spare pennies please go over to his Just Giving page and donate. It doesn't have to be a lot. This little boy is just happy when someone has heard his message.

His mum is the business owner of For the Love of Yarn and she is holding an auction on Friday 23rd May at 8pm to help raise money. So she is looking for crafty related donations from anyone. I have donated a pair of socks. I actually won't be able to knit them until my placement is over in 15 weeks but she was okay with that (especially since she plans to place a bid on them). So if you fancy donating something or want to check out the auction itself head on over there.

This wasn't my only reason for posting about this. In a world where all you hear about is that bad things that happen I thought it was nice to hear about a very selfless little boy. It makes you think that maybe everything will be okay after all.