Artful Readers Club - January

Artful Readers Club

I've boobed on this before I've even started by thinking it was the last day of the month that it is due when in actual fact it is the last Friday which is a full 6 days ago. Oopsie

I chose the book 100 Flowers To Knit And Crochet by Lesley Stanfield as my first one. It has sat on my bookshelf for some time and apart from a very quick flick through I hadn't read it.





January was a busy month so I figured it would be easy to read a knitting or crochet book and bang out a few flowers. Big mistake.

I'm not hugely experienced at crochet but I would consider myself as very experienced at knitting. On the whole I found this book hard going to understand the crochet in comparison to most other patterns I've done before. I really struggled with even the basic projects because it isn't clearly written in my opinion. I fared a little better with the knitting but mostly by fudging some of the instructions to make them work. I was disappointed by this book if I have to be completely honest and would not recommend it. It definitely didn't inspire me.

Here is what I created and to be perfectly honest they are going to end up either in the bin or the bottom of my knitting bag. The book didn't even inspire me to finish them.





Having had a quick look at some of the amazing art (see the link at the top of this post) the other bloggers have made I feel a bit of a phoney this first month by only making a few flowers that I can't even be inspired to finish off. However I have started my February book and am already inspired so it isn't all doom and gloom :-)

Skywatch

I haven't done Skywatch for a long while so with the turn of the year I gave myself a challenge of documenting the weather each day. I'm pleased to say I have got to the end of January and only forgotten one day. I still documented it though as an iPhone note.

I used Overgram to write on each photo and uploaded them to the
Project 365 app from which I generated this photo.





I also have a knitting project related to this which I will share in a couple of days.

Spalding Bulb Company

I recently signed up to the Spalding Bulb Company bloggers club.

As a welcome they sent me my choice of plant and a pack of 100 spring bulbs. I chose a Bay Marisa apple tree. It is also known as Tickled Pink and I'm quite excited for it to crop after looking at photos on the internet of the red flesh.




I had to wait for the ground to thaw at the allotment before planting. I found a small window of opportunity and enlisted the help of a teen (he's mine not just a random one off the street lol)
Between us we dug a hole and planted the tree.




We planted a few of the bulbs around it and sprinkled a few slug pellets around. Some other bulbs I planted have already been a meal for the pesky slimy pests.
In the same window of opportunity we also planted some rosa rugosa near the fence we put up a couple of weeks beforehand so we planted some more of the spring bulbs randomly around the planting area. I'm looking forward to seeing how they work out.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Artful Readers Club

The first 2013 challenge I am embarking on is the brainchild of the lovely Darcy the Artful Readers Club is a year long project. We choose 12 books we haven't read before, read one per month and at the end of the month review it and create a project inspired by it.

I haven't chosen my final 12 yet because I have read a lot of the books we own and I wanted to do this with proper books rather than the ones I have on my kindle but we are allowed to have just 6 for our first post.





I raided the 10p section in the library this morning and came away with 3 random ones. I have added 100 Flowers To Knit And Crochet and The Allotment Handbook from my bookshelf and found another library bargain to add to make up my first 6. The Allotment Handbook was a christmas present and the flowers one is a recent purchase that I haven't had time to look at other than a quick flick through initially. I'm going to start with that one because it leads directly to the project part of the book club.