forty: sconeroses and crochet

On Thursday, it was time for my first proper WI meeting. I gave @kingfamily a lift as her house is kinda on my way and it seemed silly driving two cars to get there when we could share. We had a catch up in the car and when we got to the car park we bumped into @neverforgetcouk in the car park and chatted on our way in. We walked through the front door and had a lovely warm welcome. Liz was on the door and welcomed me like she knew me forever!  We were lucky to have Mario from Someone Once Told Me coming to talk about what inspired his blog and how it got to where he is now. Also he chatted about where he’s going next – from June 2013 he’s doing a world tour. I think he said about 20 different places in the end working his way across Europe into Asia, Australia (I think!) and then into America and Canada – then again you can just check out this list from his blog:

• France (Paris)
• Germany (Berlin)
• Switzerland (Geneva, Zug)
• Italy (Emilia-Romagna)
• Malta
• Egypt (Cairo)
• South Africa (Port Elizabeth, Cape Town)
• UAE (Dubai)
• India (Punjab, McLeod Ganj)
• Bangladesh (Chittagong)
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Cambodia
• Vietnam
• Philippines (Manila)
• China (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing)
• South Korea
• Japan (Tokyo)
• Australia (Sydney, Melbourne)
• USA (cross-country tour)

This would be an amazing world tour – probably something that WezWanders would head off on! Can I go too? Traveling to that many places would be amazing! Problem is I don’t have the money and I have a family to look after here – I guess for now my passport will just have to stay in it’s safe place.

Yesterday, I finally had a play with the Vine App – I’m not entirely convinced that it is worth the space on my phone (especially given the issues that have been had with it’s start up) but it was worth a try and was kind of fun. On the iPhone app there isn’t sound but when you look it up on the internet there is sound. I tried to post the video but I can’t work it out so here’s a link.

A few weeks before Christmas I taught my friend to crochet, It was a good time to hang out and catch up, discuss what everyone is up to now that we’re all grown ups (haha well at least in name we’re grown ups I think we all still act our shoe size sometimes!). I taught my friend how to make granny squares – using a combination of my own instructions and our own twist on it as we went along. I was sent text messages and tagged in pictures to try and solve the hiccups along the way but it was good fun. She decided that she’d make a blanket for her little one. At the beginning of the week she asked if I could help her stitch it all together as she’d be finished soon. I had a cold so I suggested that if we got together at the end of the week that gave me time to get rid of the cold so I didn’t breathe it over her (and possible pass on to her little one). Yesterday we got together to stitch it all together, she had a couple of rows on the last square to do so I worked on my baby blanket while my friend finished with the squares for the blanket she was making.

We laid all the squares on the floor to decide what pattern to assemble them in. I then started in one corner walking through how to crochet the squares together while my friend started the other side – that way I could teach her by showing her but rather than doing it on my own work I was helping her. I did six of the twelve squares and then sewed in all the end while she did the other six. I headed home and about 20 minutes later or so I got a picture of the finished article. I am so proud of her!

We also got talking about our lives growing up and also crafts and how they play in our lives. My mum taught me to sew, knit and crochet when I was growing up. Crochet and knitting didn’t stick with me at first and actually crochet only finally stuck with me in the last year or so when Mum went through it with me again (very slowly!). Now I’m teaching people but what changed things in 10-15 years. I have lots of ideas but I think that’s for another post. What do you think? How has our lives changed that makes us want to make things now rather than buy them if we can?