A round up of what's been happening

 January is quickly coming to a close....who could have believed it would go so fast? Only a few more days and then it's spring.....in Ireland it is anyway!

This crazy little difference between Ireland and the rest of the northern hemisphere is something I only realised last year......for some reason we follow a different seasonal calender. The lovely little emerald isle follows the Gaelic calendar which sees the seasons change at different times based on the strength of the sun! So happy Spring everyone!! (Okay I'm a few days ahead of myself but one can only look forward in life!)

In a little bid to get more accustomed to blogging more regularly I thought I would do a little feature at the end of each month to summarise how it's all gone.

So what's been happening?
 
Eating: We've been eaten quite a lot of one pot wonders this month, Goulash, creamy risotto, curries to name but a few.

Drinking: Too much!! There doesn't seem to be such a thing as a post Christmas detox round these parts. Also teapots of tea at a time.

Watching: Grey's anatomy, The Big Bang theory (two new episodes and then it stops...whats that about?), Revenge has also started back.

Reading: The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult. It is such a lovely read, cleverly written with the right amount of suspense throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was also a nice break from all the Game of Thrones I had been reading before Christmas.

Doing: We started back our cycling again although we has now been hampered by that dame thing called rain...ugh!! We also ventured out around the Green chain in our new walking boots, you've got to break them in somehow! I'm really looking forward to getting out on longer walks and eventually getting a proper hiking weekend in there somewhere.


I've had a pleasant January, not as depressing as i thought it would be after all the festive fun. February looks like it will be good too. A swanky dinner is planned in the next few weekends which I cannot wait to have!

How has yours been? What are you looking forward to in the coming month?

Chloe x

Knitted wristwarmers

In a bid to try and get my ass in gear and post more often, I give you a long awaited post!! This is a prime example of my unorganisation, as I was meant to post about it in November!! Anyway, better late than never I guess.

I've been trying to keep myself occupied now that the darkness seems to be constant in London. Sadly that has meant watching endless amounts of Grey's Anatomy and Breaking Bad ( I've finished season 2 and STILL haven't found out whats so amazing about it).

With this in mind I've decided to turn couch sitting into a productive occasion.......enter knitting!!
I may have mentioned before that it took me three months to knit a scarf a few years ago (said scarf is in the above picture). Well when I was at home last I managed to find a few balls of the same wool and decided to nab it to make a hat with. Sadly I couldn't find a nice* hat pattern (*that was free) so decided instead to change my plans and knit some gloves. While perusing pinterest I stumbled across some lovely moss stitch wrist warmers. Now bearing in mind that I only just finished a tea cosy as my first solo knitting project, these seemed a bit adventurous for my skill level. Surprisingly no. I took some books out of Lewisham library, one of which was the excellent knit step by step. This book definitely helped me complete my wrist warmers.

Nevertheless there were some mishaps. Firstly the pattern calls for 54 stitches to be cast on and I have no idea why. I made them to these specifications and ended up with warmers that could fit both my wrists together with some leftover. Then came the mind boggling task of trying to work out how many stitches my wrists needed. After several attempts I ended up casting on 38 stitches and this seemed to work well. Despite the overestimate on wrist sizes the wrist warmers were pretty easy to do once I got into the flow of it. Moss stitch is a bit slow to knit, endlessly changing from knit to purl but hey....you end up with a really pretty pattern that makes your project look much more impressive that it is!

Sadly even with my new stitch count the two are not the same size.....but for a first time at moss stitch I'm pretty happy to have one slightly baggier than the other.

I also included a little thumb hole....which I wasn't meant to do but I hate having things that aren't far enough down my wrist so I thought having a hole for my thumb would stop the warmers going up my arm. It was easy to do, just don't sew up the whole side!

Have you ever had a project that just didn't turn out right? Or have you knitted something that you are really proud of?

Chloe x

Pop on over to my Pinterest board to see what other knitting patterns are rocking my boat at the moment.


(I do apologise for the over use of the word wrist.....)

That's not what it's for....

Why hello there!

Today I'm going to show you a little something I did em....let me see.....maybe three months ago!! Yea, I told you I fell behind with my posting on here.

When we moved into our flat originally we slept on a mattress on the floor. The first day here we managed to get a lot of our furniture from the local charity shop, including a bedside mini chest of drawers. So we had a bedside table going on without the bed. The eventually we got the bed. I was the lucky one who got to sleep on the side of the bed that didn't have the chest of drawers so I had to put my light on top of the head board of the bed!

For a long time I would pop into the furniture charity shop in Lewisham and have a quick whizz around to see if they had anything suitable for my side of the bed. Unfortunately because the heater is pretty close to the bed I needed something that was fairly skinny.

After months...actually over a year of looking, I decided to do it myself. Myself and Adam went of to Ikea looking to see what could work. Just as I was about to give up hope I spotted this box and thought it would work perfectly (while looking for a link to it, it looks like it's not there anymore). I bought the cheapest stool Ikea had to offer and hey presto, a bedside table!

Despite the fact that none of the furniture in our bedroom matches I didn't want to keep the box in its original pale wooden colour so decided to stain it. I stained it with a mahogany wood stain. Unfortunately since I was doing it on a not so pleasant day I had to try do it inside.....bad move. DO NOT try to stain wood indoors. I managed to give all parts 2 coats of stain and then we promptly left the flat for the evening to avoid the fumes!!

It'll need a quick going over in the summertime as I'd like it a little bit darker but it does it's job nicely at the moment. I like having more storage in the bedroom too and for once i haven't filled it up completely!

Another little bit I like about it is that it doubles as two items of furniture (essential in a tiny London flat). As I didn't screw the box onto the legs I can still pop the top onto them and turn it back into a stool...yay for extra seating!!

Do you loath having mismatching going on or do you just embrace the oddness of it all? What have you re purposed?

Chloe x
(p.s. did you notice my lovely new cushion on the bed??)

What's in a new year?

Blogosphere has been awash with new year resolutions and goal setting for the last couple of weeks.

As usual, I'm slightly late at all the revelling and welcoming a new year in. Why? Mainly because I've been rushed off my feet. 6 weeks off uni hasn't turned out as nice as i thought it sounded but I'm getting my head around everything now and finally embracing all the things that i have to do.

With all the rushing about i took time to switch off my brain and have a gentle think about new years resolutions.

Firstly let me tell you a little secret. I hate new years resolutions. I'm also not that big on the whole new years thing in general. It makes little difference to me other than i have to try to remember to put 2014 instead of 2013 when writing the date. Some people feel like life is going to change dramatically and suddenly be great just because a new year has started.

Well done you if you feel that way and genuinely make a go at trying to make it better. I know lots of people who just expect things to change in a new year without trying though and it just seems so silly.

It also seems stupid to set something that you probably don't enjoy in the most depressing time of year. It seems to me that people end up stopping their resolutions after a couple of weeks and then end up feeling crap about themselves for not continuing with them.Then the whole thing is just worse than it would have been if they didn't set a goal in the first place.

Why make yourself feel bad for enjoying yourself. I did dry January last year (not intentionally, it just kind of happened) and it's not really something i could be bothered to actually set as a challenge for myself.

I know some people live off goals and setting goals and making lists of things they need to do. Don't get me wrong, i like to make lists too, mainly because ill forget everything otherwise, but i just don't feel like i constantly need to set myself goals and challenges.

If I'm not happy with something I'm doing i try to stop myself from doing that. Since Christmas I've tried to stop myself from eating chocolate so often (it's really not great for my poor skin). However, I still managed to contribute to the eating of three tins of sweets in my house while i was home for Christmas. I'm not going to beat myself up about it, I'm just going to use it as a motivation to eat more fruit instead.

So, where am I going with this rant? Well i have decided to try set myself one little task....i refuse to use 'goal' in my personal life.

This poor little blog has been neglected since birth. I manage to find time to read the blogs i follow, check Pintrest a couple of times a day, I even recently joined Instagram. I've got projects completed and pictures sitting on my laptop, waiting to be put somewhere. I am therefore going to get my ass in gear and start posting on here more.

Life gets in the way of lots of things but i like doing my projects, i like reading about other peoples projects and i am going to try my bestest to talk about and put up my projects here.

There a 'task' for me to complete in the coming year, and onwards!

How do you feel about the new year? Do you like to set yourself goals and make resolutions?

Chloe x