Quick and easy chunky flower brooch - FREE PATTERN!

Completed Flower Brooch

Brooches are pretty "in" this summer and there are literally hundreds of patterns on Ravelry for all manner of flower brooches. Most of them are made with thinner yarn as I wanted to use up the last bits of my Wendy Fusion chunky.

I whipped up this flower pretty quickly (5 mins!) and I thought I'd share this quick and easy flower brooch tutorial with you. 

Central & Middle pieces

Outer Flower Piece

Yarn: Wendy Fusion or other chunky yarn

Hook: 6mm

Gauge: not important!

You'll also need: Brooch blank / brooch pin

Instructions:

Central circle:

Using a lighter colour, use a magic ring and make 10 single crochet in ring. Pull tight and fasten off.

Middle Flower:

Ch 4. Join with SS to first SC to form a ring.

Ch 1, 12 DC in ring. Join with SS to 1CH.

*SC, HDC, DC all in next SC. DC, HDC, SC all in next stitch** repeat from * to ** all around for 6 petals. Join with SS to 1CH.

Fasten off.

Outer Flower:

CH4, join with SS to first SC to make ring.

*CH 14, SC in ring** repeat * to ** for another 9 times (10 petals in total).

Finishing up:

Place the 3 flowers on top of each other and sew together. Sew or glue a brooch blank to the rear and you're done!

You can always add a button to the centre or even beads to it!

I'm actually going to make another and attach it to a hair elastic to spruce up my dreads a bit!

Things are starting to move on the moving front! (long post!)

Squish enjoying Nannie's Garden

The weekend just passed was the busiest we've had for a long time. We left Devon on Thursday and headed back up to Wales. We always leave early so that IQ naps while we drive and wakes up fresh faced when we arrive. The weather was gorgeous and the drive was wonderful.

We had a house viewing planned for Thursday afternoon. It was a house we'd seen over and over again on Rightmove and loved it but it got overlooked as it was a little out of our price range. After having a chat at the beginning of the week, we decided that we could probably 'just' afford it so booked in for a look. We waited a little while past our viewing time as the estate agent was running late. This gave us enough time to have a look at the back of the property as well as walk around the neighbouring streets. The outside view didn't really give much away though!

When the agent arrived he welcomed us and showed us into the house. As soon as the front door opened and we stepped inside, Andi & I looked at each other and gave the 'wow, impressive' side glance. We had a really good look round and loved what we saw. Two living rooms with open fires, a huge kitchen diner with enough space for our 6 seater dining table (and plenty of walking around room) and great sized bedrooms. The only slight disappointment was the garden. We've both been very used to quite large gardens and ideally were looking for a bit of grass and a bit of earth for veggie growing. Sadly, this house had a courtyard style garden but it was a reasonable size with no reason why you couldn't turf it.

voucher / pendants / buttons

We asked the usual housebuyers questions about the boiler, double glazing, loft etc etc and all of our questions were answered by the agent. He knew we liked it. Because we did, we loved it.

We walked the shortish 15 mins back down to my mum's house and all the way kept saying it was 'our house'.

It was perfect.

The agent said he'd call us Friday to see what we thought but we were going to a wedding, so it would have to wait until Saturday.

The wedding was such good fun. It was a long term friend of my parents who I'd known since I was small. It was a gorgeous day and the wedding venue was spectacular. Right on top of some mountains with the most glorious view. All of my family were staying the night but as we had IQ we didn't feel comfortable leaving her in a room by herself, or it wouldn't have been fair that one of us had to sit with her until the other fell into bed. We booked a taxi around 11:30pm and all fell into bed pretty sharpish!

Gorgeous Fabric

Saturday morning was spent lazing around, a cooked breakfast freshened us both up and the parents came back around 11am (just in time for the rugby!). We sat and chatted about the house with my parents and they could tell we loved it. We talked money matters and how we'd afford it and promised that after all the moving we've done over the last 5 years, this would be our 'forever home'.

I excitedly rang the estate agents with our offer. They told us they'd convey it to the vendor and see whether they'd accept or not. Of course, we went in with a pretty low offer bit it was on the borderline of what we knew we could afford. We just had to wait and see...

Sunday was my birthday and I was well and truly spoilt. My gorgeous hubby bought me some amazing pendants for casting things in resin, beautiful wooden buttons and a gift voucher for My Fabric House. Eeeep! I used it to buy some gorgeous fabric bundles and fat quarters - very exciting! We had a BBQ at mum's house as the weather was still so beautiful. My little bro acted as head chef and there was so much food! We were all stuffed! My grandparents also spent the day with us along with a couple of mum's friends. We also had a visit from the lovely Samboy and G! I was well and truly spoilt rotten.

More fabric!

Monday came and we still hadn't heard from the agents, they were having trouble getting in contact with the vendor to let them know about our offer and we'd got a little disheartened by this. Maybe they were holding out on another offer? The whole of Monday was spent worrying that we weren't going to get the house, especially after we'd fallen in love with it!

Tuesday was time to go home and we packed everything up and were about to leave when I had a call from the agents. I jumped to my phone. The call wasn't what we wanted to hear, the sellers had declined our offer stating that they wanted about £10grand more than we offered and we just could not afford that, no way! We were gutted. We drove home on the verge of tears - both of us.

My favourites!

After the three hour journey we unpacked and chatted more about the house. We really, really wanted it. It was a tough call as we couldn't afford much more at all, especially as the price was already over the stamp duty threshold meaning that we'd have to pay out more cash than we could afford. We bravely (and maybe a bit stupidly) upped our offer, but not by much. We explained that we're ready to move, have the cash & mortgage in place and can get the sale through as quick as they liked. We anxiously waited for the call back. Maybe they couldn't get hold of the seller again? Maybe they thought we were taking the mickey?

Then the phone rang.

I jumped to it once again and halfheartedly answered, expecting the same response as the morning. To our delight the vendor had accepted our slightly higher offer! The house is ours! So, after that incredibly long winded post I'm happy to say that we've bought our forever home! The move is imminent and once the ball starts rolling we could be looking at moving the beginning of July! I am so so so so excited. I can't wait!!

The not so good news about my Pfaff 300e

The cat is not amused.

In my last post, I shared the joy that I'd repaired my Pfaff Smart 300e and I couldn't wait to begin stitching. Well, it's not all good news.

Blinded by the sheer delight that the machine was actually working I forgot one small thing. I needed to hook it up to my computer to transfer my lovely self made design. This is where the problems have started. I can't for the life of me find the original disc that came with the machine. We've moved 5 times since I bought the machine so it could be anywhere. I didn't think not having the disc would be too much of a problem as the internet has a world of information about device drivers and I'd surely be able to find the one I was looking for...

I should be so lucky!

I can't find the disc or the drivers ANYWHERE. I have searched and trawled the internet for the past 3 nights without any success. I've found numerous blog posts over the years by people with the same problem and it seems to be un-fixable.

My lovely threads, waiting to be used...

I phoned Pfaff UK this morning and the chap I spoke to was nice enough but bluntly told me that without the disc, my machine is virtually useless! Thanks Pfaff - massive help! (that conversation sent me into a mini sulk so I went as cleaned the bathroom... as you do) Yeah, OK, the machine comes with a few pre-set designs in its minimal memory but that's not what I want it for. I can't even purchase a replacement disc as the machine is long discontinued. My only hope is to find another owner of a Smart 300e and kindly get them to copy the disc for me.

And that's where I am now. Registering and posting on numerous embroidery, sewing and craft forums and websites in the hope that I find someone else on this planet who hopefully uses those sites and who can help me in my struggle.

So I have a couple of hundred pounds worth of machine that it looks like I won't be able to use.

Humph!

It's aliiiiive! The embroidery machine is back from the dead.

About 5 years ago I bought myself a Pfaff 300e embroidery machine. It was an ex-display model and the lady at the shop kindly gave me a demonstration to see it working before taking it home. You can imagine my frustration when I brought it home and it worked once. And that was it. Once. And to add salt to the wound, the shop closed around a year later meaning I couldn't go in and ask for help.

I tried everything. I mean, everything in my limited knowledge of sewing machines at the time to fix it. I had lots of tantrums. Hundreds of snapped needles. To my frustration I kept getting an E14 error message - 'thread break'. I would re-thread and re-needle and nothing worked. Sadly to say, I gave up trying.

Fast forward 5 years. We're due to move house (hopefully) soon and I've been having a good clear-out. When I brought the dreaded machine downstairs, my husband saw it and said "oh, you're trying that again are you?". He obviously remembers the tantrums and tears well. I stated that if I couldn't get it to work this one last time I would sell it on - as it's effectively useless to me.

I set it up and attempted to sew a preset design. The same thing happened, the machine would do a few stitches, jam up, give me the error message and refuse to restart. When I re-threaded it would do the same and then snap the needle. I thought, it MUST be the tension... so I tried again, and again, and again, and again.

But thankfully I stayed calm this time.

I then noticed that the top thread wasn't picking up the bobbin thread. So I removed the baseplate and had a rummage around the bobbin area. I was using the correct bobbins and everything looked fine. So I slowly lowered the top needle and watched the mechanism move around in the bobbin and then spotted the issue. The hook in the bobbin mechanism wasn't quite in line so my needle was coming all the way down and back up without it catching the thread!

So I slowly adjusted the mechanism while lowering and raising the needle. I managed to get the mechanism right in the spot where the needle is at its lowest and it finally caught the thread. I quickly screwed it all back together and apprehensively tried again.

It only blinkin worked!

I am so so pleased that I've managed to fix it. I was loathe to sell something I paid a couple of hundred pounds for without even using it.

But that's not the end of my problems... oh no...

I want to create custom embroideries and stupidly, the only decent and reasonably priced programs are for Windows computers only. I'm a Mac user and there's not a single Windows machine in this house. So I'm stumped for the time being. Typical. The machine works now I can't use it to do what I wanted it to do in the first place!

I'm currently researching a program called Parallels that allows you to run Windows alongside your Mac OS so you effectively have a half/half machine. So far... it's looking quite expensive.

Bummer!

We're STILL up for sale...

It's been a while since my last blog post and I'm sad to say we're still waiting for our house to sell. Our agents have been great and doing a really good job at getting people through the door to view our house. We've also come so close to getting an offer but were always pipped to the post by another house. It's very frustrating being stuck in this limbo.

Getting a viewing, cleaning the house, presenting it well, showing people around, hearing they love the house, then the but... they saw another house that they offered on instead. Humph.

The fact that we're getting so close means that the price is right, the time is right, the house is in good shape... we just need the people who want our house!

We've been slowly packing things away - such as non-essential kitchen stuff, clothes, baby toys etc etc. We've now got to the point where nearly everything that is left is essentials and if we packed it away too soon, we'll end up rummaging through boxes to find it again in a few days time. It's annoying.

We did go and view a few houses last week in the village we'll be moving back to. They were all very different types of property and we totally fell in love with a fixer-upper type place. The house was HUGE but needed complete renovation. We're not scared of the challenge of a complete renovation but we're not in a position to make an offer until we've sold our house. I'd be so sad to miss out on that house because it was perfect (apart from the birds nesting in the attic and lack of kitchen & bathroom...).

Hubby isn't working at the moment and we're also getting a little short on money, not dangerously getting into debt kinda short, just running down our reserve cash. He really needs to get back to work soon and we can't do that until we've moved. There's so many things that have to come together soon.

I'm feeling a little stuck.

I'm a take the bull by the horns kinda girl and like to know where I'm headed and how. I like to feel in control even if that's not always the case but right now I feel totally out of control. I can't make the house sell and I can't make us move until this has happened. I've just got to sit on my hands, be patient and hope that everything works out in the next few weeks!

We're up for sale!

(this isn't our board by the way!)

I am so pleased that we've got the ball rolling and our house is officially up for sale. It technically went up for sale last Wednesday but the for sale board went up yesterday. Wahoo yaah!

We've had a couple of viewings so far and a few more planned for next week. The first viewing was incredibly positive, the people loved the house and there was no negative feedback but sadly they offered on another house :-(. But, that's a really positive start for only a week on the market.

The next big step in our move is having a clear out. The husband is currently on his was back from the local tip after emptying the workshop, aka manshed, aka manfred-manshed. He filled the car to the brim with bits of wood, backs of sawdust and empty pain cans. Most of the wood came from old reptile tanks and other DIY jobs. It was amazing to see how much we'd accumulated over the past year!

I also emptied the mugs & glasses cupboard of all the one-of-a-kind (but once in a set) mugs that seem to gather dust. There was a whole bag full that went out and now we have some shelf space back!

We've also been busy giving the kitchen a new lick of paint, as well as painting the garden walls. They're now gleaming white and have a real Mediterranean glow about them since the sun has come out.

The next steps now is to work our way through each room, packing unnecessary clutter and chucking out junk. We have A LOT of junk... Although this is the most time consuming part of moving I find it the most therapeutic - throwing out old junk and getting ready for a new life somewhere. It's exciting.

Things seem to slowly be falling in to place. There's a house ready and waiting for us in Wales, we just need to move in. So there's no house hunting to be done just yet. It's not very big and we'll need to find somewhere more permanent and larger further down the line but as a stop-gap it's perfect.

My longing for home is going to come true!

A few weeks ago I posted a soppy-ass post about wanting to go back to my hometown. I've been home and family sick since IQ came along. We moved to a city that we found out we rather dislike, which was a major bummer. Strangely, things took an unexpected turn and now it seems like my dreams are all coming true at once.

I'll explain...

The reason we moved was for my husband's work, he was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we couldn't turn it down. If we hadn't taken that chance I'm sure we would have come to regret it. As far as jobs go it was great to start but became less than satisfactory for him. Amazingly, he did the very brave thing and left last week. It wasn't a hasty decision and a few things happened  in the week before that cemented his desire to leave. Of course we talked through the decision, had the money talk and he decided that it was the right thing to do.

This job was the only reason we were staying where we are, so, with a hip-hip-hooray, we've decided to put our house up for sale. I really couldn't be happier. Our house went up for sale yesterday and we had our first viewing today. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it doesn't take long to sell!

There's so much more to write about house-selling and what not but that'll be another post entirely.

So, as you can imagine with sorting the house sale out and going to my best friend's wedding, we've had a busy few weeks!

Here's a few photographs from the wedding, we had a blast! (I'm not going to include any pictures of the bride because I'm sure she'll be doing a big dress reveal when she's back off honeymoon.)

Just two weeks to go...

In 2 weeks time the gorgeous Samboy is getting married and I have the absolute honor of being one of her Bridesmaids. She was, of course, one of my girls at my wedding. I've never been a bridesmaid before and I'm very excited and a little nervous!

Because of the wedding being so soon, we're having a gathering of LadyShapes (her words!) tonight, which means I'm packing myself and IQ in the car and heading back up to Wales for the weekend. I'm a little anxious about the journey as it's the longest trip I'll have made on my own with her. If any of you know the roads in Devon you'll understand that I HATE driving on the A38. Windy roads, patches of fog and usually rain makes the journey difficult on the best of days. I'll be taking it slow that's for sure.

We're heading out to Cardiff and having a meal at Wagamamas. I'm so excited. The nearest one to us is 40 odd miles away so it's going to be a real treat. This is my idea of a hen party. No L plates, tiaras or inflatable penises for us ladies, oh no. That's my idea of hell. I heard a saying once that summed up the aforementioned hen party quite well, 'it always ends with someone in bunny ears crying on the stairs...'.

On Saturday I also have the exciting plan of having a little 'wedding practise' with Samboy and her family. This also means I get to see her dress. I think I'm going to cry when I see it. In a good way of course! That evening I've been invited out for a meal with the ladies of her family and I really hope I can make it, but I don't want my mum to worry about putting IQ to bed two nights in a row. She can still be a little difficult at times. Fingers crossed she'll be an angel for Nannie and I won't have to worry!

It's a busy weekend lined up for me!

I have also been working away at my cardigan this week. The front and back pieces are done (with a little frogging here and there - and the front pieces aren't the same shape!!) and I'm now working on the hood. I think I might put it together and see how it looks without sleeves. Mainly because I can't be bothered working up two sleeves!

The blanket has obviously been neglected whilst the cardigan takes shape but I'll be getting back on that soon enough!

Have a fab weekend!

Silent Sunday - Cat and Yarn

A herb update

The herbs on my windowsill are doing great, half of them anyway. The coriander and basil are absolutely loving their little pots but the thyme and parsley are no shows. I know that they do take a little longer to germinate than the others so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Hopefully the last few sunny days will give them the kick they need.

Elsewhere in the garden rosemary, lavender and thyme are growing fantastically again. There's a lot of fresh growth and they all look really healthy. My chives are also doing great and there are a few of the first buds growing so there will be the appearance of the gorgeous purple flowers really soon.

I love this time of the year. Everything starts to grow again and there are even a few bees buzzing about.

Spring is wonderful!