A crochet-filled week, with a bit of embroidery and the plan to sew!

This week I have mainly been crocheting and embroidering.  I caught some kind of virus on New Year's Eve so have been feeling really rotten.  Then the day before I was supposed to come back to work, we had some kind of problem with the sewers (of the toilet variety, not the kind who sew) in which they flooded into our cellar...  Add to that one sick bunny and I didn't go back to work on Tuesday as planned.  Instead I stayed in and waited for the Sewage company to come and sort it out, after taking Tiff to the vet.

Tiff is fine, her stomach was in stasis but some injections sorted her out.  I had to isolate her when I got back to check she was eating and passing it as it's hard to tell when there's two rabbits living together.  So I was out in the garden every 10 minutes seeing if she'd pooed, whilst the house smelt of, erm, poo, waiting for men to sort out my poo.  What a great day!  I was convinced they wouldn't ring me as promised, but would just knock on the door so I didn't dare go up to my sewing room.  It turned out I was right and they had just knocked on the door so good job I didn't go upstairs.

I have been experimenting with crochet stitches.  I have the book Handbook of Crochet Stitches by Betty Barnden and I've decided to work through it, having a go at most of the examples:

These are the basic stitches first - double crochet, half treble crochet, extended something can't quite remember, trebles, double trebles and treble trebles and also a front stitch double crochet stitch.  It might seem a boring exercise, but I quite enjoy it and it's building my confidence!  I'm using some cotton that I found in a charity shop.  There was a basket of yarn with some of these balls of cotton in there, me and my mum snagged them all for 50p each!

I've also whipped up a few grannies.  Here is my paltry collection so far (I intend to do enough for a blanket - in about 5 years!!):

 You can spot the latest ones I've done as they are MUCH bigger than the original ones!  I can't figure out why. 

I also decided to have a go at the tutorial for a granny heart at The Royal Sisters (tutorial is here).  It didn't quite work.  Hmm, not sure what I've done there!  Doesn't look very heart shaped does it?

In amongst all this crocheting, I have done some work on my crewel embroidery - quite a lot of work actually.  Here's how it looks now:

I'm taking part in the 2011 Weekly SAL and this is my project.  I actually joined last year, thinking it'd be done pretty quick, but I struggled with it at first and then Christmas got in the way.  I'd never done crewel embroidery before, or even knew what it was, and this kit turns out to be for Advanced stitchers - it didn't say that on the internet!  It is starting to flow now though and I hope to get it finished soon so I can start on a large cross stitch.

Last, and definitely least, I've chosen some fabrics for the scarf I intend to sew from Sew Darn Cute.  This will be the first in my Craft Book Challenge for the year, and if it works, I'll make another to add to my present stash.  I want to be clear, I haven't cut these fabrics, or figured out the order, or even ironed them, I've just chosen them!

Gorgeous, gorgeous greens as I don't own a green scarf.  They are from the Moda layer cakes I bought, but I have no idea which range or even if they're all from the same range!  I'll let you know how I get on!