I am not the house-wifey type....but

I don't know what it was - the sun maybe - but this weekend I managed to prove myself to be the perfect wife and mother. Now anyone who knows me will be aware that cooking and cleaning are not my forte. In fact, I will pretty much do anything to avoid both of these things, if I can. Luckily my husband is a great cook and likes to do it and well, the house just gets cleaned as and when it needs it.

But for whatever reason, this weekend I got the bug. It started with an early morning on Saturday. We are Formula 1 fans and the first race weekend of the season started at 5am Saturday morning and we were up and watching. That led to a morning in the garden raking leaves and sweeping up decking. Then the sewing machine came out (while my bread dough was rising!) and I finally made my granny square cushion. A blog on this will be along soon.

Washing was on the go and drying in the, by now, hot conservatory and the afternoon ended with freshly baked bread and dinner cooked for my hardworking husband, who had to finish off a job on Saturday. The evening was filled with glasses of wine and Mad Men on download.

Bring on Sunday... the early start didn't quite happen and the eventful Formula 1 race was watched via the recording at about 8.30am. But that was OK because as soon as it was over, my daughter and I headed to the shops and bought everything you could think of to have a mega-baking session. We managed to make some passable breakfast muffins, an ugly but yummy pineapple upside-down cake and some rather overdone choc chip cookies.

Then it was a full roast dinner with homemade Yorkshires for the four of us, plus my son's girlfriend. The evening passed with my folding washing ready for the school week and then settling down to a few rows of my ripple blanket and Top Gear.

As you might expect I was pretty much exhausted after all that. Bear in mind that my usual weekend is spent crocheting and listening to the radio...so I had an early night and watched Mary Beard on the BBC iPlayer and her fabulous lecture on the silencing of women - recommended.

So even the most undomesticated of us can really get some stuff done when we put our minds to it. Strangely, this motivation has continued into this morning and I got up at 5.30am and have managed to get most of my work out of the way before a trip to the orthodontist with my son. You know what? I might even walk into town to meet him...

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Love Heart pattern and magic circle tutorial

So - we all know it is Valentines day coming up and coincidently, I am teaching a crochet class this week. In that lovely harmonious way, I can marry up my class with my love of all things cute and help my beginners to make some pretty little crocheted love hearts. I have created a tutorial for them, with some photos included which I will post up here for all to see. The main focus of this is to teach the magic circle (the way I do it, anyway) - but it is also a great way to practise some basic stitches and create something really cute. The class is actually a freebee for a group of friends and is a great way for me to get back into teaching crochet as I haven't done any for a good six months (events conspired and all that...). There will be six ladies attending and I expect that more cups of tea will be drunk than love hearts made! Take a look at the tutorial and pattern here: Tiny Valentines Hearts (using a magic circle) Make a magic circle: Wrap the wool around yo

Happy Valentines Heart

Happy Valentines to all of you. I thought this was the perfect time to share this little interlocking love heart which I made a few weeks back. It has been happily hanging on the shoe cupboard - kind of in transit to its final home (but it might just stay). Mine doesn't look nearly as neat as the original which can be found here and its construction is tricky. But if you love seeing it all come together at the end - this is the pattern for you. If you are quick, you could rustle this up before your other half gets home. Imagine his delight... In our house Valentines Day isn't really celebrated - that said, I received a lovely text message with a little poem which was cute and funny and just like my husband. I can do without the flowers and chocolate, when he makes me smile with just a few words....

A lacey thing - Inside Crochet 49

If you are used to crocheting with DK or even thicker wool and your crochet hook collection consists of hooks which are larger than 4mm - you will be terrified (as I was) of trying a light and lacey crochet pattern. But I never let a little terror put me off - after all, what is the worst that could happen? So a few days ago, I started what might be one of my more ambitious projects - a lace shawl using a 2mm hook and lace-weight yarn. While the pattern which came from the January Inside Crochet magazine (issue 49) is fairly easy to follow, it is all the tiny little chains which worried me. In fact lace-weight crochet is easier than I thought and my shawl (which I suspect will be used as something else) is coming along nicely. The key to it, I have found, is to concentrate on each individual stitch or cluster and avoid looking at the whole thing too much. So, each and every chain stitch looks the same, every DC is the same and in the right place etc. Then you move on to the

If Only I Could Crochet...

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