An exciting week!

Hello!

I had a rather strange week with lots of good and bad excitement. Looking back I can't quite believe it happened in less than a week!

Last Saturday our car started to make very strange noises when starting. If it started that is. No good sign at all! The car isn't that old (5 years) and well maintained. I took it to the garage about three weeks ago to get it checked because it made some high pitched noises and the gear was weird too. They assured me that there was nothing wrong. At all. 

On Sunday we realized the car warranty guarantee would run out on Wednesday.

On Monday I called the garage and made an appointment on Tuesday at 7:40 am. At around 10 am I got a call from them telling me that  the starter broke, it would cost over 3500 € and they weren't sure the guarantee would cover it. Ouch! At 4 pm we got the call it would be covered but you can imagine the hours in between... Lots of worrying.

In order to get to work the next days I had to take public transport which involved three different types of transportation plus a lot of walking. On Thursday, a bomb was found near the station in Dortmund where I had to get off (a dud bomb from WW2), so I basically left work running to get home via public transport before the evacuation started... Why? Because I needed to get off at that station in order to not be stranded at work and I had other appointments in Dortmund later that day. Oh and did I mention I had to pick up my now fixed car from the garage which was pretty close to the evacuation side?!

What a week! It worked out fine in the end but there was a lot of stress and I am tired. Stress makes my fatigue flare which is really annoying (I get fatigue from my autoimmune sickness too but a different kind than Michelle).

On the other hand it was a week full of excitement too. I haven't been to Australia since Michelle's wedding in 2011 - a very long time Michelle and I haven't seen each other in person and I haven't been in my favourite town, Sydney (we talked about the times we saw each other in person here). Plus my boyfriend hasn't meet Michelle's family yet and hasn't seen Down Under. So we planned to go there sometime later this year or in 2016. It was all very hypothetical though.

Well, on Tuesday I looked up flights just for the fun of it and saw a brilliant offer from Singapore Airline. And what shall I say... We booked! So we will be in Australia for four weeks this winter. Michelle thought I was kidding for about half a day when I told her btw... :P I am soo excited even though it's still over ten months away. The little giraffe Michelle gave me for my birthday in 2013 is very anxious to see her relatives in Australia again too and begs me to take her with me. I think I will. :D

Oh and I also managed to sneak in some crochet this week. Not as I hoped I would but some... I finally finished the blanket for my dad and will post it soon. Also I made another Granny Star Blanket, this time in reverse colours. And I worked a bit on the blanket for my Granny. Hm, I just realized I actually got more done than I thought!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Take care

Anne

Candy Giraffe!

Hello! 

I have been so busy the last few weeks making African Flower pieces for the next batch of ordered animals :) 

I had an order for a "non-gendered, colourful" giraffe, and had to think of a way to make such a thing! I decided on using four main colours - pink, blue, yellow and green - and the dark and light version of each colour. How though to work out where to put what colour, and what pieces I needed to make? 

Fortunately, I had just finished a giraffe for another order, so I cut up some paper into little squares and coloured them in with each colour. Then, with some glee, I stuck pins in the pink giraffe!

I had to add a 5th colour - plain purple - to fill in some spots where I just couldn't avoid having two pieces of the same colour together.

Here is the work so far! I am totally loving the colour combination. What do you think I should call it? Suggestions so far are "Candy Mix" or "Sherbet Bomb" :)

I'll make sure to post a picture when he's finished!

UPDATED TO ADD:

Here's the finished Candyman :)

Giraffes, giraffes, giraffes!

Happy new year, everyone! 

We are just back from our annual Christmas holiday to Lake Macquarie.  I had the best crochet spot in the world :D 

It seems that 2014 will be the year of the giraffe for me - that design is so popular at the moment! 

Here are four little troublemakers I finished for a client as Christmas presents for her grandchildren:

You might recall I asked for your opinion on colour combinations for another order for a child whose favourite colour is orange! The votes came in, and this is the outcome.  The client originally wanted a hippo, but discovered that the little boy's favourite animal is the giraffe, and it was fortunately easy to slightly alter the number of pieces to make the different animal.

I had some mighty trouble tracking down 4 ply orange acrylic yarn in Australia, and eventually had to give in and visit the Deramores UK website.  I now need to forget I ever saw it - the yarn is so cheap and the shipping is so reasonable! 

Fortunately I managed to get enough yarn to make the matching blanket to go with this little giraffe.  It's a corner to corner blanket, with the pattern adapted from this one. I love the texture of the corner to corner blankets, but the middle rows (all the way along the longest diagonal) feel endless, and it's easy to get disenchanted with it. I'm glad I perservered though, the outcome is totally worth it.

Of course, if you want to order an animal or a blanket or talk about designs or colour combinations, just drop me an email at wrappedwithlovebymichelle at gmail dot com !