Here he is in all his glory, just in time for the big game at Wembley tomorrow. My Dad is really pleased with him and it was a pleasant surprise for him when we went out today. That's it - this is my final Dalek. If I ever suggest that I may be thinking of doing another please feel free to remind me how much I hate those bobbles!
I have now started to prepare for the big project for the Brighstone Christmas Tree festival. Yes, I know we're not even in June yet, but as I'm doing the 12 Days of Christmas, there are 365 items to make plus a tree. It isn't impossible but you can see why I want to get started. I need a fair amount of yarn for this project so today I have been sorting out my stash.
I blush at the amount of yarn I have tucked away "just in case". It's like my Dad's shed; he has lots of pieces of wood, old rope, bean poles, lolly pop sticks and heaven knows what else tucked away in his shed for "just in case". I have a little storage space under a seat in the corner by the fireplace, and another little space between the sofa and the DVD shelf. Not to mention several knitting bags carefully placed here, there and everywhere. This afternoon I dragged it all out.
It's a combination of leftover yarn, yarn that I've seen in a shop and thought "oooh, that might be useful" or "I could make something with that" and also yarn I inherited from my Grandma.
For the project I need various different shades so I've drawn up a spreadsheet of what I need and how much of it. Then I dived head-first into my stash to see what was what. I'm quite lucky really - I had plenty of black, lots of brown and beige left over from doing the mice, orange and flesh colour from doing the cake and blue from the TARDIS. I have quite a bit of red but not enough to cover the 3 100g balls that I require which is a shame (eagle-eyed readers will note the colour of my most recently completed project - oops). Essentially I have to buy some red, some white and then the more specialised yarns; Sirdar Funky Fox, gold crochet yarn and the flecked grey/flecked rust - the sort of colours and types that you don't tend to have hanging around "just in case".
The other thing I did was sort out my needles.
As I went through all my bags of yarn it became apparent that my needles were not all in the same place and definitely weren't in pairs. There were needles in half-finished projects, needles in random balls of yarn, needles lying abandoned in the bottom of carrier bags. As I was sorting out the stash it seemed a good opportunity to organise the needles.
The sizes range from 15mm down to 2.5mm. There are also various DPNs, some crochet hooks, a cable needle and a strange u-shaped thing that came with my Grandma's stuff and I have absolutely no idea what it does. I also don't doubt that it is probably very useful. Answers on a postcard.
The heap on the bottom right is my "anonymous" pile. These needles don't have a size on them. I do have a gauge somewhere for measuring needle size. It's in a "safe place" at the moment - as soon as I find it I will be putting it to good use!
Now that I had some order restored to my collection I decided to bind them with old hair bands so all the 3mms, 4mms and 5mms were together and so (theoretically) easier to find when I need them.
So now that I'm all prepared I can actually make a start.
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