Hooray, Pink Stripes

Look a new crochet block! It's been a while between stitches but this one has been helping me wind down at the end of a few crazy moving days.



It is Pink Stripes (Block 36 in Jan Eaton's 200 Crochet Blocks). I ran out of the main pink yarn when I was very close to the end and had to finish it with a substitute yarn. It doesn't match as well as I thought it did while I was making it. Perhaps I shouldn't be crocheting in such a dimly lit room!

Some may remember my 30 Things challenge last year? As part of that I made a few crochet blocks from this lovely book by Jan Eaton ::



Well, recently I came across this blog post by Miss Amy Badskirt. She is making 200 hundred blocks, just like the title of the book says! After reading this I decided to join her, I already had 10 so why not make 190 more?

Sounds daunting, I know but like Amy, I also like a list to check off. I'm not planning on rushing them anyway. Pink Stripes is now my 11th block, I plan to work through all the beginner level blocks first then work up. Hmmm, sometimes I think I'm a little too methodical.

Amy has set up a 200 Crochet Blocks Flickr pool if you are interested in joining in and showing off your blocks :)

Still not finished unpacking, still not feeling settled, Bear Among Bees may continue to be a bit on and off for a little while until the dust settles, so to speak.

Tea, bags and tea bags

From Bear among bees

Well I've changed my blog title, address and look today! I was feeling pretty indecisive about bear and the bee as a title, so I've been playing about with the words all week and came up with Bear among bees... A matter of a couple of words difference but somehow it just sounds more... interesting... more active perhaps?

I've been making a handbag for a friend, it is a surprise present, she doesn't yet know I have a blog so I can talk about it here. It has tea bags in a rainbow of colours embroidered on the sides, and a tea cup on the inside pocket. We like tea, actually I like tea so much I've done two photo series' based on the intimacy of sharing a cuppa with someone, but that is another story.

From Bear among bees

Anyway I got the tea bag & cup motifs from the Sublime Stitching book (mentioned in a previous blog) and it is coming along very well.

I've been stitching every evening after work this week. After a long period of having not stitched I was a bit out of practice. I guess it's like riding a bike after not riding for a while. At first you might be a bit wobbly but the memory of 'how to' comes back pretty quickly.

I often come home from work grumpy and it is not that I don't like my job, I'm just tired and ungrounded... time is not my own at work but I've noticed coming home to a short stitch on the couch (with a cup of tea of course!) has done wonders for my mood this week.

We've only just begun

Ok, so this is my first blog post. I've been deliberating for quite a while about whether to start a blog or not, worrying that I just don't have enough interesting things to say to justify my own blog, but I'm just going to jump in the deep end and try it out after reading Meet me at Mikes: How to Start a Craft Blog .

I've been a lurker on blogs (mainly art & craft orientated ones) for quite a while now, so perhaps it is time to share some of my thoughts and interests with others. I think it will take me a little while to get the hang of some of the technical parts of blogging! It might look a little plain for a while. Though I was very surprised how easy it was to upload a picture to this post...

I've kept journals since I was about 10 years old, this was started by one of my primary school teachers. Each morning the class had to write a journal entry in an exercise book kept for that purpose. I enjoyed it so much I continued on with this practice up until a couple of years ago, while I was at art school and my grandmother was sick with cancer. It was such an overwhelming time, I couldn't write and could only bring myself to stitch abstract patterns. Maybe during such an emotionally intense experience it is too painful to stand back and look at the situation from the kind of perspective (at least I) needed to write.

Well perhaps this will be a new beginning in my writing...