craft

Lovely spring walks and more cute crochet owls

Posted by

1

I have found that one of the keys to becoming a stay at home mum is getting out of the house. I like to get out of the house at least once a day with little monkey so try and fill up his awake hours with visits to friends and relatives. This week some of the people we see regularly are busy, how dare they?! 🙂 hehe So for the sake of my sanity monkey and I have been going for some lovely spring walks. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t anything new, we have also been for lots of lovely autumn walks and winter walks! Thankfully he does enjoy a good walk in his buggy, I think he likes to look around and feel a breeze on his face, although there is a time limit, 40 mins to an hour is the most I will get out of him sitting still!

We are very lucky and live very close to a country park, which is really lovely, but well at a very quick march it takes about 15 mins to walk there on the most direct route, which with there and back considered, doesn’t leave much time to actually do or see anything when we are there! I have tried different routes back but that seems to push the monkey a bit far and he gets very cross by the last leg of the journey. So most of the time we content ourselves with a walk around the local area, which is very nice too and there’s usually lots of dog walkers and other pram pushers about which gives him plenty to look at.

WP_001388

Today though, with the sun shining I decided to go for it and go to the country park. We took the most direct route and I got some good exercise in marching over there. We had just about enough time for a push on the swings and a go on some of the other toys (that are probs a bit old for him really) and then it was time to head home again. All in all a nice walk though and very mild so did us both good. It may feel like spring but it certainly doesn’t look like spring yet!

WP_001403

Although we do have a few lovely crocuses popping up in our garden and what looks like the beginnings of daffodils. We only moved here last April and the garden is looking like our next project as we have done a lot of demolition with it but not really made it very pretty yet! Nice to see what is popping up this spring though as it really was just a mess when we moved in!

P1020582

Another key to sanity as a stay at home mum is keeping busy and having little projects for myself as well as keeping monkey entertained, and my current project is crochet. After my first crochet owl, which turned out very cute, albeit full of mistakes, I decided to perfect it and at the same time make a little family of owls 🙂 So we have a mummy and daddy (not sure which is which but maybe the pinker one is mummy? Even though that one is bigger than the other… oh how stereotypical of me, it doesn’t really matter does it!?) and then I decided to try and make a baby owl! As  complete novice at crochet this was potentially a bit ambitious of me but I decided to wing it and I did it! One cute baby crochet owl to go with mummy and daddy owl 🙂

P1020572 P1020573

Hubby has raised concerns that we may start to look like crazy owl people soon as we have already have a few other owl shaped things in the house so I have agreed not leave the owls there 🙂 I am starting a crochet granny square patchwork blanket next – more on that coming soon! Oh, I managed to get a picture of lovely mother in laws owl too, and here it is 🙂

WP_001375

Cute Crochet Owl

Posted by

0

I’ve really been enjoying doing the crochet, I like being able to sit and work away at it in the evenings after Monkey has gone to sleep, while hubby and I watch some trash telly. I also do the odd bit during the day while he naps so housework has definitely been suffering! Oh well! 🙂

But, well, I am an impatient soul and doing the rows backwards and forwards, while very therapeutic, wasn’t really cutting it for me. I mentioned in my last crochet blog that I had found the fabulous site of Bunny Mummy. Now she really is very good at crochet and makes some gorgeous things, one of which being this adorable cute owl, and I couldn’t wait to give it a try! As I am a complete beginner I was very confused by some of the stitches and sought help from my lovely mother in law, but after a bit of explanation from her I was off!

It didn’t start out brilliantly as somehow the first circle I made was completely wonky. I started again and this time it wasn’t wonky but by the time I got to the third round, somewhere along the way I had miscounted and it was a bit skew-wiff and the wrong size.

P1020554P1020556

Not to be put off I duly started again and woohoo this time I had a correct circle! I carried on, fluffed my way through the new stitches and somehow managed to make something that resembled the pattern I was following. I continued the next night and managed to finish the bodies and eyes, but realised I didn’t have a needle nearly large enough for yarn so had to put it aside. Lovely mother in law is also making an owl and as she is much better at crochet than me she managed to finish hers already! Anyway she lent me a needle(bodkin?) and some wadding for me to put it all together.

The next day we had a lovely visitor in the form of my friend Monika all the way from Switzerland so instead of crocheting the evening was spent eating good food, drinking lovely wine and generally catching up. Although then we had a rough night as Monkey is really not sleeping well at the moment and hubby got a poorly tummy in the middle of the night – end result a very tired little family. Luckily Monika managed to sleep through much of it and wasn’t too disturbed, or I would have felt truly awful!

Monika headed home the next morning, via London to do some shopping, and we had a lovely visit to monkey’s grandparents and I got to see the lovely finished owl! Sadly I didn’t take a picture but will try to snap one over the weekend. After seeing Granny’s lovely owl I was chomping at the bit to finish mine so during Monkey’s afternoon nap the housework was once again cast aside so I could finish my little owly, and here’s the end result! Such a cutey!

P1020559

 

Not perfect by any means, in fact full of mistakes, but well, you can see what it is supposed to be and that’s good enough for me on my first try! Going to make a couple more I think, see if I can perfect it 🙂