Making Stitches 2025 CAL : Bonus Birthday Bunting Square

June 25, 2025June 25, 2025 ~ Making Stitches ~ 1 Comment

Making Stitches 2025 CAL Bonus Birthday Bunting Square

Hello, hello, what do we have here? It’s a Bonus Birthday Bunting Square! Seeing as I am celebrating 10 years of my blog (formerly Postcard From Gibraltar and now Making Stitches) I thought the occasion deserved a special crochet square. As a matter of fact a few weeks back, someone asked me whether I might make more than just 12 squares this year for the Making Stitches CAL. As it had been at the back of my mind, I thought ‘why not?’ and here we are with an extra square….

The Making Stitches 2025 CAL is my way of celebrating 10 years spending my time in this little corner of the internet, it feels fitting to have a birthday square to mark that. As with all the squares in the CAL (crochet along), this is a very free and easy, join in if you fancy it (at any time) kind of CAL. I can’t keep up with weekly CALs these days with the juggle of work and family life, but I can manage to make time for a bit of crochet each month.

The whole point of this CAL is for it to be a stash buster. To date I have just used Stylecraft Special DK which I had in my stash, however, there is one yarn in this pattern which I have failed to identify – the beige of the cake! It’s a synthetic DK so it works with the other yarn in the pattern and I have offered an alternative from the Stylecraft Special DK palette should you wish to replicate what I have done.

As with all of the Making Stitches 2025 CAL squares, this is very free and easy, it’s up to you which squares you make and what colours you choose to use. For anyone wondering about how 13 squares will work out in a blanket, never fear, I have plans for one other bonus square later in the year, which will at least give you an even number should you choose to use them all.

Without further ado, here’s the pattern for this special party square!

To make this square, I used Stylecraft Special DK in (A) Beige (unidentified colour) could use Camel (1420), (B) White (1001), (C) Pale Rose (1080), (D) Silver (1203), (E) Sage (1725), (F) Saffron (1081) & (G) Spice (1711).
You will also need a 4mm crochet hook, scissors, a stitch marker, and a yarn needle.

Abbreviations (in UK terms): blo = work in back loop only, ch = chain, dc = double crochet, dtr = double treble, fptrtr = front post triple treble, fyo = final yarn over, htr = half treble, mc = magic circle / magic ring, rep = repeat, RS = right side(s), slst = slip stitch, st = stitch, tr = treble, yo = yarn over hook.

In case you haven’t come across a FPTrTr before, you begin the st with yo 3 times = 4 loops on your hook. You will work around a st in a round/row below the round/row you are working. Once you have inserted the hook where it needs to be, through the front of the work, around the back of the st and back through the front of the work again, yo and draw the loop back through from around the st (you will now have 5 loops on your hook). Complete the triple treble at this point in the usual way – yo and pull through 2 loops 4 times.

Tension: Tension isn’t important for this project as long as you maintain the same tension throughout the project so all your squares are the same size. Once blocked this square will measure approximately 20cm x 20cm. The stitch count of the final round of each finished square will be 120 plus corner chain spaces.

Cake Base

Using Yarn A, make a MC.

Round 1 Ch2 (not counted as a st throughout), 12 tr into MC. Slst into top of ch2 to close the round. Pull the central yarn tail tight to close MC. (12tr)

Round 2 Ch2, 2tr into every st around. Slst into the top of the Ch2 (24tr)

Round 3 Then, fold the circle in half RS facing outwards, work along the outside edge of the half circle and through both sides to join them together. Ch1, (2dc, 1dc) rep around.(18dc)

Round 4 Turn your work and work back along the stitches made in Round 3. Working in the blo, ch1, slst into first st, 1dc in next 2 sts, 1htr in next 2 sts, tr+ch1+1tr in next st, 2htr in next st, 1dc in next 4 sts, 2htr in next st, 1tr+1ch+1tr into next st, 1htr in next 2 sts, 1dc into next 2 sts, slst. Fasten off and break yarn.

Cake Icing

Using Yarn B, make a MC.

Round 1 Ch2 (not counted as a st throughout), 12 tr into MC. Slst into top of ch2 to close the round. Pull the central yarn tail tight to close MC. (12tr)

Round 2 Ch2, 2tr into every st around. Slst into the top of ch2. (24tr)

Round 3 Then, fold the circle in half RS facing outwards, work along the outside edge of the half circle and through both sides to join them together. Ch1, (2dc, 1dc) rep around. (18dc)

This time, turn the half circle 180 degrees so you can work along the flat bottom edge, make a 6tr shell into the edge of Round 2, 6tr shell into the centre of the MC, 6tr shell into the edge of Round 2 on the other side of the centre. Slst into the 1st st of Round 3. Fasten off and break your yarn.

The Square

The Square

Using Yarn C, make a MC.

Round 1 Ch2 (not counted as a st throughout), 12 tr into MC. Slst into top of ch2 to close the round. Pull the central yarn tail tight to close MC. (12tr)

Round 2 Ch2, 2tr into every st around. Slst into the top of the ch2. (24tr)

Round 3 Ch1, (2dc into 1st st, 1dc into next st) rep around. Slst into the top of the ch1. (36 dc).

Ready to join the cake & icing to the backing square

Round 4 Take your cake base and work your stitches through the blo of Round Round 4 of the cake base when working sts into Round 4 of the square to join the two together. Ch2, (2tr in first st, 1tr in next 2 sts) rep until you have worked every bl in the cake base. Then pick up the cake icing and working into the blo of Round 3 of the cake icing, join it to the square in the remain sts of Round 4 also working (2tr into the 1st st, 1tr into next 2 sts) rep until end of round. Slst into the top of the ch2. (48tr)

Round 5 Ch1, (2dc in next st, 1dc in next 3 sts) rep around, Slst into top of ch1. (60dc)

Round 6 Ch1, (1dc in next 3 sts, 1htr in next 2 sts, 1tr in next 2 sts, 1dtr ch2 1dtr in the next st, 1tr in next 2 sts, 1htr in next 2 sts, 1dc in next 3 sts) rep around, slst into top of 1ch. Fasten off and break yarn. (16 sts on each side = 64 sts)

Round 7 Join Yarn D into any st. Work 1dc into every st around and 1dc ch2 1dc into every corner space. Slst to top of 1ch. Fasten off and break yarn. (72dc)

Round 8 Join Yarn C into any st. Ch2, 1htr into every st around. Work 1htr 2ch 1htr into every ch space. Slst into top of ch2. (80htr)

Round 9 Rep Round 8. (88htr)

Round 10 Rep Round 8. Fasten off and break yarn. (96htr)

Round 11 In this round you will be adding birthday bunting using clusters of 5x fptrtr stitches worked around sts in Round 8. Join Yarn C 2 sts before a corner space. Ch1 (does not count as a st) 1dc into the last 2 sts before the corner, 1dc 2ch 1dc into the corner space, *1dc into next 3 sts changing to Yarn E in the fyo of the last dc, work 5 fptrtr into the 3rd st of Round 8 (change back to Yarn C in fyo of 5th fptrtr), miss the next 5 sts of Round 10, 1dc into next 2 sts changing to Yarn F in the fyo of the last 1dc, work another 5x fptrtr cluster around 10th st of Round 8 (changing back to Yarn C in the fyo of the 5th fptrtr), miss next 5 sts of Round 10, 1dc into next 2 sts changing to Yarn G in the fyo of 2nd dc, worth a 5 x fptrtr cluster around the 17th st of Round (changing back to Yarn C in the fyo of the last fptrtr), miss next 5 sts of Round 10,* 1dc into next 2 sts, 1dc 2ch 1dc into the corner space and repeat from * to * around the square and slst into the top of the first dc to close the round. Fasten off and break yarn. (104 sts)

Round 12 Join Yarn D in any st, work 1dc into every st around (ie the dcs and the tops of the 5x fptrtr clusters too), also work 1dc 2ch 1dc into the corner spaces. At the end of the Round, slst into the top of the ch1, fasten off and break yarn. (112dc)

Round 13 Join Yarn C into any st, ch2, 1htr into every st around. 1htr 2ch 1htr into every corner space. Slst into the top of the ch2 to close the Round. Fasten off and break yarn. (120htr).

Using corresponding coloured yarn, sew the edges of the cake base and cake icing to the square.

Candle & Flame

To make your candle:

With Yarn E, ch5, 1dc into 2nd ch from hook and every ch across. Fasten off and break yarn leaving a tail to sew the candle to the square. (4dc)

To make your candle flame:

With Yarn F, make a MC. Work 3dc into the MC, ch2, slst into 1st ch to form a picot, 3dc into the MC. Pull the MC tight. Fasten off and break yarn leaving a tail to sew the candle onto the square.

Sew the candle into place on top of the cake and, once that’s secure, sew the flame into place on top of the candle. You can then decorate the cake icing with some French knots to represent hundreds and thousands/sprinkles on top of the cake.

If you make a Bonus Birthday Bunting Square of your own, I’d love to see it! If you share it on social media, please either tag me or use the hashtag #MakingStitches2025CAL

Enjoy!

Lindsay x

From Postcard from Gibraltar to Making Stitches – a decade of sharing my corner of the internet with you!

June 25, 2025June 25, 2025 ~ Making Stitches ~ 3 Comments

Today marks a very special day for my blog – it is 10 years old!!

Back in June of 2015, I would never have imagined that I would still be blogging a decade on. It kind of blows my mind that my blogging adventure has lasted so long. I had no idea what an impact it would have on my life, the people I would meet and the doors it would open for me. It has brought me friends – both online and in person, it has given me skills that brought me paid work, I have gone from being simply a hobby crafter to a published crochet designer and podcast award finalist and it’s been a whole lot of fun.

I am taking the liberty of using today to have a look back at the past ten years, for some of you who’ve been in my little corner of the internet for a long time, much of this won’t be ‘news’ but I think it’s worth revisiting (if only to remind me of how much fun I’ve had along the way). Back in the early days, I thought this blog would be a kind of diary, to record our life as a family and it has very much been that for me. Back at the beginning I wrote the blog anonymously, I was living in a very small community at the time and I didn’t want to stick my head above the parapet and ‘show off’ I preferred to be an observer. Since those days I’ve got a bit less self-conscious about my blogging (maybe it’s an age thing and I worry a teeny bit less about what people think of me!).

For those of you who have only found me in the past few years, you may not be aware that this blog first started life when my family lived in Gibraltar. I had long been a fan of crafting blogs and I had, for quite a while, fancied having a go at blogging myself. Whilst I have been a crafter all my life, I would never have thought of myself as accomplished enough back then to share too much about what I was making, but living in the Med, I had lots of photos of blue skies, the sea and pretty flora to share instead.

Looking north from the Med Steps in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve

After much indecision over whether anyone would actually want to read anything I had to say about my little corner of the world, I decided to have a go anyway and Postcard from Gibraltar was born. The annual Gibraltar Convent Garden open day was the perfect content for me to share in the very early days, lots of beautiful flowers and well-kept borders as well as being able to share a little bit about what it was like living on the Rock.

The Governor of Gibraltar’s back garden at the Convent

So many people visit Gibraltar fleetingly, on a cruise ship stop-off or on a day trip from the Costa del Sol, but the longer we lived in Gibraltar, in spite of its size, I discovered there was so much to learn about it. When we first arrived there as a family through a work relocation, I knew precious little about it. Myself and ‘Mr Postcard’ had visited just twice in the preceding months to find somewhere to live and to get the eldest ‘Little Postcard’ into school (there were just 2 ‘Little Postcards’ in those days!).

The early days

My old Postcard from Gibraltar profile picture which I painted at watercolour class

When we first arrived in Gibraltar, I was a stay-at-home Mum full time, I had one young son in primary school and a toddler. I threw myself into life in Gib, in a bid to make friends and settle into the community and found that, unlike when we had moved towns in the UK, very quickly I made friends in Gibraltar. I think this was mainly down to the fact that within the ex-pat community, your friends very quickly become your family. Everyone of us was a long way from our actual family and when someone needed help, we would all rally round to support each other. That said though, the Gibraltarians I met outside the school gates were just as welcoming and we found ourself attending our first Gibraltar kids birthday party within a couple of weeks of arriving there.

By throwing myself into the Gibraltar community I learned so much about the place and its people. It is famously a melting pot of cultures and traditions, populated by Genoese fishermen, Moroccan traders, families who straddle the land border between Gibraltar and Spain and lots of other nationalities too. There is a large south Asian population, lots of Jewish families of different denominations and from around the world, an Anglican Cathedral as well as a Catholic one (there was also a Church of Scotland when we lived there – although that has sadly now closed) and there are two mosques as well. Even the local dialect, Llanito (pronounced Yaneetoh), borrows words from Spanish, English, Genoese, Maltese, Moroccan and other languages!

There was so much I could write about, from the cultural calendar we had fast found ourselves absorbed into, to the fascinating architecture of the colonial buildings of the historic Upper Town and town centre, to the flora and fauna of the Rock. I decided that even if what I was doing in my day to day life was a bit boring at least people might be interested in what it was like living in Gibraltar!

Connecting with other bloggers

In those early days of blogging, the advice was to read plenty of other blogs and get involved in the blogging community. During those days I came across another blogger who lived by the sea and had a penchant for crochet. Her name is Eleonora and you may know her! Little did I know at the time that Eleonora had just started her blog, Coastal Crochet, a couple of weeks before I launched mine, or that one day we would finally meet in person (more on that later)!

The first few rows of my Sandy Bay Seaside Stash Buster Blanket

It is safe to say that Eleonora’s blogging journey has been rather more stratospheric than mine, but despite her hitting the big time, we have stayed connected through the years. I can clearly remember the day she launched her first crochet along – the Seaside Stashbuster blanket. I loved crocheting along with many, many other crocheters around the world throughout the weeks as the patterns were released. For some reason, when I first began the blanket, I decided I would reflect Gibraltar in the colours I used. Our favourite beach on the Rock was Sandy Bay, so I thought it would be good to try to create a blanket inspired by that little corner of Gibraltar. It was such fun to make and amazingly some of the stitches Eleonora chose just worked perfectly with the stage of the pattern I wanted to reflect at that time! It was as if she knew what I needed to happen! You can read all about my Sandy Bay Blanket here.

I was thrilled the following year, when Eleonora sent us off on another crochet-along journey with her Changing Tides Blanket. It was asking to be made into another Gibraltar beach – so the Catalan Bay Blanket was born!

Eventually we actually met in real life, the first time was at Yarndale in 2022, more recently we caught up at Yarndale last September.

When we met up last year, we started talking about something special to mark our joint 10th blog anniversaries. You can find a sneak peak of that project in a little while….

Another blogger I had the privilege to meet is the person, is Lucy from Attic 24. Had it not been for me reading Lucy’s inspirational posts about her crochet, craft and beautiful home town of Skipton in North Yorkshire all those years ago, when I started my crochet adventure, I don’t think I would have started this blogging adventure myself. After several years of reading and absorbing posts all about Yarndale, I managed to get a ticket for the festival, a ticket for a plane journey back to the UK and a train ticket from Manchester to Skipton to visit Yarndale myself in 2016. It was the year they’d asked for people to crochet and knit little Yarndale sheep. I made Llanita, the Yarndale Sheep and she was posted off for the Yarndale appeal. I also took her twin sister with me and gave her to Lucy when I met her – it was a true fangirl moment!

Sunday Sevens

Just 4 months into my blogging adventure I read about a blog series called Sunday Sevens, which involved writing a post about your week just gone and featuring seven photos from the past seven days. The idea was conceived by Natalie from the Threads & Bobbins blog and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to share a snapshot of my life in Gibraltar without writing a long blog post about some rather mundane day-to-day things. On 11th October 2015, I published my first Sundays Sevens. Very quickly, the Little Postcards would comment, when I stopped to take a photo of a nice sunset or a pretty flower or some other thing, “is that for Sunday Sevens?” Very often the answer would be “Yes!” On 26th July 2020, I published the 230th and final Sunday Sevens. That marked the point at which we moved back to the UK from Gibraltar and seemed like the right time to wrap the series up.

That didn’t mean my round ups would stop. At the start of August 2020 I started my Sunday Postcards, which later morphed into my monthly ‘Postcard from…’ updates.

A stroll around Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a very photogenic place – especially in the sunshine. I would often be stopped in my tracks as I wandered the streets of the town centre pushing a buggy on the way back home from the school run or wandering to the shops and appreciate just how lucky I was to be able to call it home for a while.

I would be taking my phone out all the time to snap pictures as I went on my wanders and decided that I would share those wanders with you. My ‘A Stroll Around Gibraltar’ series was the result. The most popular of which (still to this day) featured a stroll up the Med Steps.

A Postcard From…

Whenever we were away from the Rock, I would often document our travels with a little ‘Postcard from…’ post. We were very lucky that at that time we were able to travel quite a bit, both back home to the UK to visit family and friends and to a few parts of mainland Europe too. The ‘A Postcard From…’ series was one I really enjoyed writing, and is one which I really must keep going with whenever I can. In fact I have a few ‘postcards’ in my pending drafts folder from years ago, which if I get the time to work on, I will finish and add to this collection.

Summer Craft Challenges

Each summer, since 2016 (excluding 2020 & 2023), I have set myself a Summer Craft Challenge. I found, in the early days when my blog first launched and I was a full time stay-at-home Mum with 3 young boys and a 10-week-long school summer holiday, I would easily find myself rushing around doing family things all the time and my crafting took a back seat, and my sanity along with it. By carving out just 5 or 10 minutes of craft everyday throughout the long summer break, and documenting it on my blog, it worked wonders for my mood.

I’m looking forward to starting my Summer Craft Challenge 2025 when my boys break up for summer this year too! If you fancy joining in, it would be lovely to have your company! Just tag any social media posts #SummerCraftChallenge2025 and if you want to see any of the previous years just search for #SummerCraftChallenge on Instagram and some should pop up for you to see.

Big Changes

Life doesn’t always work out quite the way we’d planned. In 2020, our family of 5 became a family of 4 and I brought my 3 boys back to live in England. In the 7 months running up to our impending big move, there was a lot of adjusting to do. Not only that, we were ‘enjoying’ a lot more time indoors during the early days of the Covid pandemic. In the preceding 18 months, I had launched a podcast in Gibraltar as a way of sharing more about the stories I had learned during my time living there and sharing chats I’d had with some of the fascinating people I’d met over the previous decade.

It was called ‘Gibraltar Stories’ and I was particularly proud of it – especially a series about the Frontier Closure (the land border between Gibraltar and Spain was closed by General Franco between 1969 and 1985), it was a very difficult time for the people living on both sides of the border and I felt privileged that so many people trusted me with their stories of the time. If you are interested in listening, you can still find Gibraltar Stories on podcast apps and the podcast website can be found here as well as on Apple Podcasts and Spotify too.

Unfortunately, with an impending move back to the UK, that podcast wasn’t sustainable but I had really enjoyed making it, so wanted to find an alternative podcast subject I could start work on during lockdown and take back with me to the UK. Something I’ve always loved is craft and creativity, and after almost 5 years of blogging about it, I’d made quite a few connections with other crafty people who said they would be interested in joining me as guests (Bingo!). One of the (few) benefits of that time was learning how to record audio off video calls, it was no longer necessary to be in-person to record interviews and meant I could chat to people anywhere in the world for this new podcast endeavour.

Just as in the early days of Postcard from Gibraltar, I doubted whether anyone would be interested in hearing what I had to say, but rather than making me and my crafting the focus of each episode, I decided to speak to another crafter about their creative life and journey. At the time I couldn’t find any other podcasts which did that for crafting. There were plenty of podcasts featuring crafters talking about what they were making but none that I could see who exclusively spoke to other crafters. I spotted a gap in the market and Making Stitches Podcast was born.

I have to admit that Making Stitches really helped me in those days. They were grim for many reasons and it gave me something to focus on that was fun rather the other stuff (moving countries, finding somewhere to live in England, finding schools etc from overseas, recovering from a rather nasty dose of early days Covid etc.).

The joy I still get from making it continues. It’s been a ride. From putting my first episode out just over 5 years ago and wondering whether anyone would ever listen to it, to becoming a finalist in the first ever Independent Podcast Awards in 2023, to hitting 100,000 worldwide downloads in the last few months, it’s been great. Thank you to everyone who’s listened, everyone who’s spoken to me for the podcast and all the support!

From Postcard from Gibraltar to Making Stitches

In 2022, two years after moving back to England to live, I decided it was time for a name change. I hadn’t been sending my blog postcards from Gibraltar for 2 years by then so decided to bring the blog under the same umbrella as the podcast. Nothing really changed other than the name. I still write monthly posts looking back at what’s been happening in my life and what I have been working on.

Crochet

Collection of items used for the International Yarnbomb Day 2016 display in the Alameda Gardens, Gibraltar

Another thing which has changed has been my confidence in developing my own crochet patterns. My first (and for many years, my only one) was Mr Bumble, a bumblebee which I created for a yarn bomb I put up in the Gibraltar Botanical Gardens in 2016 -I can’t find the pattern now, but here he is along with the other bits I put up. I was so worried about getting something wrong, it took until 2021 until I tried again! Hope the Snowdrop was the first of my Up the Garden Path characters (you can see two others below). Later came some magazine commissions including some for Inside Crochet Magazine!

Prunella Pumpkin & Oakley the Acorn Tree Sprite — Oakley the Acorn Tree Sprite & Agatha the Fly Agaric Mushroom

Most recently I have been sharing my first ever crochet along: The Making Stitches 2025 CAL which, unlike most others CALS which release patterns on a weekly basis, comes out on a monthly basis instead (I simply couldn’t keep up with a weekly one these days – never mind design one!).

Each square has a design which is related to the month it’s released in. I have really enjoyed doing this so much and the thrill of seeing what someone else has made while using your pattern is real!

With this in mind, I would like to share a new pattern with you today to mark this tenth birthday of my Postcard from Gibraltar/Making Stitches blog – the Bonus Birthday Bunting Square! The pattern for this is here!

The Making Stitches 2025 CAL Bonus Birthday Bunting Square!

Talking of crochet patterns, I mentioned earlier about my collaboration with Eleonora from Coastal Crochet… Watch this space for more details on that in the coming weeks!

And that, my friends, brings me to the end of this round-up of a decade of blogging for me. Thank you for joining me for the ride, it’s been fun hasn’t it? Who knows where we will all be ten years from now? We’ll not think about that for the time being.

Thank you for being there, for reading these rambling posts and for keeping me company for the past 10 years!

Until next time, as I say at the end of my podcast episodes, take care of yourself and enjoy your crafting!

Lindsay x

A Postcard from May 2024

June 16, 2024 ~ Making Stitches ~ Leave a comment

Beautiful Rhododendrons in my back garden in May

Hello there! True to form, here’s my look back at May coming to you in the middle of June! One day I may be organised enough to get one of these to you at the start of the month…

Goodbye Diamond

Unfortunately, last month, we said goodbye to our lovely little fluff ball, Diamond. Diamond was our house bunny, he came to live with us in Gibraltar, where it was too hot for him to live outside and there was danger from the local residents too (Barbary macaques).

He was the third of our bunnies, first of all there was Bunny Postcard aka Russelina (caramel & white fluff ball), then came Snowflake (who we rescued after seeing her being abandoned in the Alameda Gardens in Gibraltar).

Russelina (left & bottom) and Snowflake (top right)

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us when we rescued Snowflake, she had a virus which infected Russelina, which ultimately led to the demise of both bunnies.

Diamond came into our lives shortly afterwards and he stayed with us until last month, he even traveled by road from Gibraltar to Manchester with a special pet courier when we moved house!

We’ll miss our fluff ball.

Amigurumay

It was the annual Amigurumay celebration over on Instagram last month run by Ilaria Caliri. It was a fun excuse to take a look back in the Making Stitches/Postcard from Gibraltar archives for suitable photos to include. It was nice to see this pair again – Rocksy & Gib, my Gibraltar apes.

A new garden project

At the start of the month I set to work on a project I’ve been wanting to do since we first moved into our home. The front garden is totally filled with pebbles and is effectively a car park. Since we arrived I had planted the privet hedge you can see, but I wanted more greenery.

Monty Don inspired me in an episode of Gardeners World when he mentioned about steel edging for lawns. I thought, that’ll do for my new flower bed. I found some online and ordered it. With a lot of help from my lovely Dad, we made a flower bed….

Then, once it was filled with peat free compost, came the fun part – filling it with plants!

Ta-dah! The photo below was actually taken one week into June (so I’m cheating here in May’s postcard) but here it is now. I’m thrilled with it, it’s got a white theme. There’s a magnolia, hydrangea, astilbe & jasmine along with white Japanese Anemones, geranium Alba & a couple of white bedding plants. I hope to add more white flowering plants in time, but for now that’s it and I’m really happy with it!

Take That!!

Well I didn’t expect to be telling you about this, but I got the chance to see Take That in concert in May too! It was a last minute thing- some of the Mums from Youngest’s football team were going, but one was ill and asked if I’d like to go in her place (this was 24 hours before the show!). I didn’t need asking twice – they were amazing.

I’d seen them once before, many moons ago when they came to the Gibraltar Music Festival and did a half hour set, but this was something else! A fantastic night of dancing and memories!

On my hook

I have been working on some top secret crochet commissions lately which I can’t share sadly, but I also made this little chap. This is mini Dan. Big Dan was in my year at school and he turned 50 last month. He plays bass guitar in a fab band which does covers of songs from our youth and this is the kind of outfit he wears when he performs. (I believe Dan’s daughters loved mini Dan!).

Dan had a fab birthday party, the band played and folk got up to sing – it was a brilliant and sober night for me as I had a big run the next day – see 👇 below:

The Great Manchester 10K Run

On 26th May, it was the day of reckoning. After months of training I put my trainers on and headed into Manchester for the Great Manchester Run 10K. It was an amazing experince – so many hundreds and hundreds of runners set off in staggered stages.

This was my vantage point in the ‘pink’ stage. The atmosphere was terrific. There was a light rain to start which was fine, but as we set off, the rain stopped and the sun came out and it got really quite hot.

The heat made the run a lot harder than I expected, but I did what I set out to achieve, which was to run without stopping at all. I did it in 1 hour 11 minutes. I have no idea if that’s a good time or not but I’ll take it as a win!

I have a medal to prove I did it! Not sure I’ll run that far again but I can now say I’ve done a 10K at the age of 50!

Thank you to everyone who sponsored me, together we raised £440 for the Jo Cox Foundation which I’m really chuffed with – thank you x

Making Stitches Podcast is back for a new series!

I was thrilled to be able to bring Making Stitches Podcast back for its eight series last month – I kicked off the new series with an episode delving into the podcast’s archives from the past 4 years it has been going. The topic was being creative for mental health and featured excerpts from chats I’d had with Lisa & Lynda-Rose from the Crochet Santuary, Emma Jones from the Vintage Sewing Box, textile artist Matthew Downham, former BBC Europe correspondent and now maker extraordinaire Mary Jane Baxter, Peace Campaigner and knitter, Figen Murray and Clinical Psychologist, Dr Mia Hobbs. You can listen through the player below or by searching for Making Stitches on your favourite podcast app.

For details on all my guests, you can find their links here.

And that, I think is it for this time. Thank you so much for stopping by! I hope June is being kind to you. See you next month!

Take care!

Lindsay x

A Postcard from November 2022 – no, make that 2023!

December 7, 2023December 7, 2023 ~ Making Stitches ~ 8 Comments

So, hello there… it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve been around here… I thought that as we head towards the end of this year, it was time to blow the cobwebs & dust off my blog and check in with you.

It’s been a year and a half – 2023 – you know … and as I dipped into my drafts folder to open a new blog post I found this – A Postcard from November 2022 a post which was started but not finished. My word, a year is a long time and an awful lot can happen in that time.

These three first photos were indeed from November 2022, beautiful sunny blue skies above the River Mersey. Little did I know when I took them that the rug would be ripped out from under our feet – it’s just as well we don’t know what lies ahead…

It’s funny really that one of the things which sparked my desire to post was a photo I took while I was on the very same walk with Son number 2 last weekend!

Taken on the same path as the above photo 1 year apart!

This new photo is of the same path, although I may have been facing a different direction, I’m not sure. It’s funny that when big things happen, that we cling to the small routines to keep our heads above water.

If you haven’t been around this way for a while, I’ll put you in the picture. This year we lost a hugely important person in our family. It’s been an unfathomable loss for me and my 3 boys. Life has changed forever in so many ways, obvious ones and in many other ways too.

Aside from the emotional side of things, I have had to return to ‘formal’ work which has meant less time for fun creative things. I have continued to make when time allowed and after taking half a year off from Making Stitches Podcast, I managed to get back into the swing of things with that. Blogging though, fell off the end of the ‘To Do List’.

Life is so different in so many ways from how it was this time last year, I have found strength I didn’t know I had and I have found my friends and family to be amazing. People are so kind.

I’ve learned many things, but the two most important ones are to lean on friends when they offer help and to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So, the real reason for me blogging is that I had been meaning to get around to it. I miss my monthly updates – looking back through the back catalogue, they form a rather interesting diary for me.

Did you keep a diary as a child? Or maybe you still do now? I did as a child – I wasn’t that great at it but I have a 5 year diary from when I was young somewhere and it’s probably about half filled. I bought another one 5 years ago… this year has been the final year and, to be honest I didn’t feel like filling that in either very much.

One thing I had done pretty regularly, since starting this blog (as Postcard from Gibraltar) many moons ago, was post updates, so I shall attempt to do that again I think. Here goes….

A new project on my needles

A few weeks back I went to Black Sheep Wools to have a catch up with my sock knitting friend, Christine Perry aka Winwick Mum. It was our first catch up of 2023 (because of the reasons outlined above). It was so, so good to get together again and catch up on each other’s news.

I went armed with a planned purchase in mind – I wanted to have a go at knitting a jumper. I haven’t knitted a garment for myself (other than socks) since Eldest was a baby. That was a beige cardigan (with variegated flecks of brown) with a cable pattern up both sides of the front. It ended up being an ok fit, but a bit itchy and had a distinctly ‘homemade’ look to it.

I have been squishing this desire down for ages saying to myself : “you don’t need to buy more yarn”, “you’ll never finish it!”, “it’ll probably look rubbish if you ever do finish it”, “why not carry on with one of your *many* WIPs instead??” – you know the drill…

Anyway I gave myself a good talking to and bought the yarn anyway! I am making a Simple Sweater by Tin Can Knits and had planned to do a rainbow striped yoke, but when I priced up how much it would cost to buy all the different colours I wanted in order to make it (bearing in mind I might never finish it and it may look rubbish if I do) I decided to opt for this (much easier on the pocket) super rainbow yarn instead. It’s called Knit Me Crochet Me and is made by Stylecraft. There was a lovely jumper knitted up in the shop made in another colour way which caught my eye. So there you have it, a jumper in the making … eventually!

I did make really good progress to begin with then when I tried it over my head it was so tight it felt like I was being choked (my fault for using the wrong size needles). This meant I lost a week’s worth of progress, but I’m back on track.

On my hook…

I am in the midst of a gift for a special person… who may read this blog so I can’t show any more than this. I will, however share this little ‘mini me’ once it has been gifted. I was thinking of writing up the pattern if it gets a decent reception, so watch this space!

A trip to the theatre (and the spooky world of Uncanny)

Last month I was lucky enough to have the chance to see Danny Robins, Evelyn Hollow & Dr Ciaran O’Keefe in action at the Lowry in Salford. I have been a fan of the Uncanny podcast since it first started, having listened to The Battersea Poltergeist previously.

When the Uncanny tour was first launched very early on this year, I really wanted to go and see it. I had no one to go with – none of my friends are into the podcast so, seeing as it was a matinee performance, I decided to go it alone. My first time ever doing that!

It didn’t faze me at all and in fact I ended up sitting next to a lovely lady and her son who commented on the fact she would never be brave enough to go to the theatre alone and shared her sherbet lemons with me! I would highly recommend it! I had my first solo cinema trip last year and that went fine – once it’s dark no one can see you are alone anyway! And if anyone has any judgements about it, it’s their problem not yours!

I pre ordered a copy of the Uncanny book and was able to pick it up at the show too – signed!! It was a big fan girl moment!

Crochet & Podcast News

My latest episode of the podcast features Fran Darlington-Pollock, CEO of the Greater Manchester Mayor’s Charity. The charity is joining forces with Black Sheep Wools in the run up to Christmas with their A Bed for the Night / Deck the Halls campaign. Money realised from selling wool packs and patterns for Christmas decorations will support the charity’s aim to provide 1,000 beds for rough sleepers over Christmas. It costs £30 for a bed for the night and the associated wrap around care. You can find out more information on the Black Sheep Wools website.

Also in Podcast news, at the end of October I went down to London to the Independent Podcast Awards. It was a fantastic night and I was able to meet up with some friends from my local podcasters club (yes they do exist – it’s our Christmas party tomorrow!). Making Stitches Podcast didn’t win but blimey the standard of the other podcasts was high so it was an honour to be considered alongside them!

You might spot Making Stitches on the shortlist (bottom right)!

Winter is here…

The temperature levels have fallen considerably in the last few weeks – this photo was taken on that walk by the Mersey a week ago – it was the end of the afternoon and the frost from the night before still lay on the fields. Yesterday it was -4 degrees when I scraped the ice off the car to drop the boys off for school!

Super cold days usually mean clear skies though so I’m not complaining – blue skies and sunsets are far preferable to damp greyness!

So that’s all from me, thank you for stopping by, it’s been nice to be back again!

Until next time…

Take care,

Lindsay x

A postcard from a difficult time

July 1, 2023July 1, 2023 ~ Making Stitches ~ 8 Comments

Hi, I’ve been thinking about how I could find the words to write this post for months. Life has been incredibly difficult since New Year for us as a family. At times it’s felt like we’d slipped into a parallel universe thinking at some point I’d wake up and be back in my ‘old’ life.

I don’t want to go into details about what’s happened, suffice to say it’s been health related and we have lost a very special person in our lives. Grief is a tricky thing to navigate and I’m on that road now with my boys. Life will never be the same for us but we have to look to the future now.

I have always been a passionate advocate for creativity helping me in tough times, and it truly has in the past. This time though, perhaps my feelings were too big so my creativity and need to make just slipped away. I ‘had’ to make a few crochet items for a commission I was working on and that forced me to get lost (temporarily) in the mindless rhythm of crocheting, but I can honestly say that in the past six months I have probably crocheted for pleasure a couple of times – the most recent of which was last night, which got my thinking about my blog & podcast.

I had big plans for the podcast this year – which haven’t happened. In fact there is still an episode which was due to be published in early January just as our difficulties first arose. I have felt a bit guilty at times because I have a lovely audience out there (some of whom have contacted me directly to check on me – which is lovely) and I always prided myself on being reliable and regular in my podcast episodes. I don’t like to let people down.

In addition to what we’ve been dealing with emotionally, I have had to take on more paying work recently to support my family and that has eaten into my spare time which in the past would have been spent having lovely chats with fabulous creative people about their lives for the podcast. The impact this additional pressure would have on the podcast going forwards has worried me, as it’s a big part of who I am, but the podcast doesn’t bring any financial reward – only emotional and in fact, it actually costs me money to make.

With this in mind, I think the time has come to face up to the future of Making Stitches. The plain facts are that my time is a lot more limited nowadays and will be for the foreseeable future but I would like to continue with my podcast and blogging adventures albeit in a reduced manner. So hopefully, in the next few days, that outstanding episode of Making Stitches Podcast due out in January will make a late appearance and some more ‘stand alone’ episodes will follow later in the year.

If there is still anyone out there still following my blog who hasn’t disappeared since I hung up my blogging hat in January, thank you for hanging on. And to everyone who has been checking on me in my absence – thank you, it’s nice to know I wasn’t forgotten. Please bear with me, and I will pop back again from time to time, hopefully with happier news and some colorful crochet…

Lindsay X

Farewell old friend….

October 20, 2022October 12, 2024 ~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

*The Rock of Gibraltar painted by me at one of my watercolour lesson*s

Way back in the summer of 2015, I set off on a blogging adventure. Inspired by the likes of Lucy at Attic24 and several other craft bloggers, I decided that I would have a go at sharing a few snap shots of my life on the Rock. At the time, I had a the unique selling point that I was based in Gibraltar, and at that time, there were no other craft bloggers active on the Rock. I thought that even if no one was interested in what I was making, at least I could share beautiful photos of my sunny surroundings way down in the south of Europe.

I felt compelled to share some of the quirks and beauty of where I was living at the time – a much misunderstood place from the outside. There is so much more to Gibraltar than the day trips from cruise ships and bus tours from along the Costa would have you believe. There’s much more than red phone boxes and fish & chips, British bobbies and Marks and Spencer in the sun. It’s home to a diverse group of people with origins from far and wide, the fortunate byproduct of it’s geographical location at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsular and just a short distance across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco and the African continent beyond.

*The Europa Point lighthouse with the Strait of Gibraltar beyond*

Soon I began sharing a series of blog posts called ‘A stroll around Gibraltar’ as I took my camera and later my phone along on walks around the narrow streets and back alleys of Upper Town and into the Nature Reserve of the Upper Rock – in fact my post about the ‘facts and figures of the Med Steps’ remains my most read post to date. I posted more than 200 Sunday Sevens posts and hosted a Friday Photo Challenge on Instagram one year as well.

*The view northwards from part way up the Med Steps*

I also used Postcard from Gibraltar to share what I was making, from the dressmaking and watercolour classes which I was able to attend once all three Little Postcards (my three sons) were old enough to all go to school, as well as a number of community crochet projects I joined in with from Yarndale worldwide appeals for crocheted bunting and mandalas to Eleonora from Coastal Crochet‘s Seaside Stashbusting blanket and Changing Tides blanket crochet-alongs.

*My Seaside Stashbusting blanket inspired by Sandy Bay in Gibraltar*

As our family went on trips around the place I would blog about our travels in my ‘A Postcard from…’ posts which included Rome, The Algarve, Carcassonne, and skiing in the Dolomites, as well as UK destinations like Manchester, Cheshire, and Suffolk.

*A few photos from one of our holidays in Suffolk as I worked on an Eleonora Tully design from Little Box of Crochet for that year’s Summer Craft Challenge*

Postcard from Gibraltar also opened doors for me and I began writing for an online parenting magazine in Gibraltar which now no longer exists sadly, I also got articles published in print for the Calentita! Gibraltarian food festival magazine. In short, Postcard from Gibraltar gave me the confidence to venture back out of my domestic set-up after many years being a stay-at-home Mum.

*My Attic24 cosy stripe blanket at Europa Point*

In 2020, along with everything else which was happening in the world, close to home for us, change was afoot. We found ourselves moving back to the UK after 11 very happy years in Gibraltar. It was a big adjustment, which wasn’t made any easier by the pandemic, but we survived! At the time, I wondered whether I should continue with Postcard from Gibraltar as it would no longer be ‘from Gibraltar’. I had begun my new podcast project ‘Making Stitches Podcast’ by then, and whilst it brought me very welcome creative distraction – especially during lockdown, I felt I would miss Postcard too much if I just finished it, so I kept it going in a slightly less regular, less sunny and blue skies kind of a way!

*I may be in the north of England now but we do still get occasional blue skies!*
*(Photo taken at Dunham Massey this week)*

More than 2 years on from our move though, I think the time is right to say goodbye to Postcard from Gibraltar. I won’t be saying goodbye to it completely though. This blog and all of the previous posts will still be available to read and if you should search for Postcard from Gibraltar online, it will still lead you here. Postcard from Gibraltar is evolving, just as I have, and from now on, will be known as Making Stitches.

It felt right to adapt what I’m already doing to compliment what I have been working on with Making Stitches Podcast. In the last two years, that has gone from strength to strength and is now in it’s 6th Series with more than 50 episodes featuring interviews with creative people from many different disciplines including crochet and knitting (including my old friend Eleonora Tully from Coastal Crochet), dressmaking, embroidery, textile art, weaving, yarn dying and more. In addition to this, I have made a foray into crochet design myself with the launch of my amigurumi crochet patterns. My life has changed quite a bit from what I was doing back in Gibraltar and it’s time this blog caught up with me.

*Looking south towards the Rock – photo taken on Alcaidesa beach*

I will still post my monthly Postcards (because I would miss writing them too much) although I can’t guarantee I’ll be any more prompt with posting them (!) and I’m pretty sure I will have another go at a Summer Craft Challenge again next year, so in a way nothing has changed, just the name.

Thank you to everyone who has read my posts, liked them or commented through the years and a special thank you to those of you who have become friends through this medium too. Your support, although virtual, has been very much appreciated over the years and it’s that which has kept me going. Who knows what lies ahead?

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Lindsay x

A Postcard from August 2022

September 5, 2022September 5, 2022 ~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

Hello there! I hope you’re well. It’s the very last day of the school summer holidays for us today… tomorrow Youngest heads off to Secondary school for the first time -eek! Also, since my last postcard post, we have had A-Level results which means that Eldest will soon fly the nest to University… not sure how I feel about that.

In the meantime here’s a little look at what we’ve been up to this last month beginning with something I completely forgot to mention which happened in July … I went to ABBA Voyage!!! How could I possibly forget to mention that?!!

ABBA VOYAGE

I know I’m not alone in the fact I grew up with Abba as the soundtrack to my life, so when I saw last year that the new show was coming to London, I applied for tickets. I was hoping to take my parents with me but unfortunately a holiday they were meant to go on in 2020 got rescheduled to the same weekend so I ended up going with a couple of school friends – which was really nice. It was an utterly amazing experience and unexpectedly emotional. I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes ABBA, and thanks to the rescheduled holiday, I’m going back to see it again with my Mum later this year too!

Vitamin Tree

It was always a tradition when we lived in Gibraltar, that on our annual summer holiday back to the UK we would take a picnic to Marbury Country Park near Northwich in Cheshire and have a walk, play some football or frisbee and then call in for ice cream at the Great Budworth ice cream farm on the way home – sounds like a perfect summer’s day out don’t you think? Well, this year was no different, although we were down to just 2 Little Postcards as Eldest has had a job this summer and wasn’t able to join us for our outing. It’s such a lovely place – which I treasured for the Vitamin Tree I got when I visited.

There’s something about a British summer and the way the world looks here which you don’t get in the Med. I think it’s the way the sun shines through the deciduous leaves maybe. Anyway, it’s not something I really appreciated before we moved to Gibraltar and I wondered whether I would begin to take it for granted again now we are back in the UK full time. I can tell you that I don’t! It’s just gorgeous. I didn’t take any photos of the ice cream farm this time – but I did snap the sunflower maze which had been planted for kids to wander through. Don’t those sunflowers look so bright and jolly?

Exam results day

Exam results day. 30 years ago I came to this very same building to learn my fate and find out my exam results. This year I went along with Eldest. I never could have imagined at the age of 18 that I would be back again one day with one of my children to find out how they had done. I’m relieved to say the exams went well and he’s now preparing to head off to his first choice of university later this month.

PARIS!

I had an amazing long weekend away in Paris with Eldest to celebrate his birthday (belatedly) and his exam success. We went on the Eurostar (which was amazing) and packed such a lot into our few days. There will be a blog post to follow with some of our adventures in, so I won’t tell you all about it now. Suffice to say it was amazing to get away for a few days (as we didn’t have a big family trip away this year) although I was ready for a holiday when I got back after all the walking and fun we packed in!

And so it begins… back to the old routine!

And so it begins…. back at football training again last week and a pre season friendly match at the weekend ready for the new season beginning next week. And just like that we were back to normal.

I began writing this post yesterday, and am finishing it off this morning (Monday morning) after having waved Youngest off on the school bus for the first time to take him to secondary. I have two still at home today, but will have a quiet house again tomorrow. I’m off on a shopping trip now to get things for Uni – wish me luck!

I hope August was kind to you! Thanks for stopping by,

Lindsay x

Introducing Daisy…..

June 16, 2022June 16, 2022 ~ Making Stitches ~ Leave a comment

Up the Garden Path Daisy - a new amigurumi crochet pattern from Making Stitches Shop on Etsy — Daisy

Hello there! Please allow me to introduce the newest member of the Up the Garden Path gang – Daisy.

Did you make daisy chains as a child? It’s something I always liked to do during the summertime – if I could find any…. you see my Dad was very proud of his garden (he still is to be fair) and rarely did he allow the grass to get long enough to allow daisies to appear in the lawn. Most of my daisy chain making was reserved for playtime on the school field or the occasional trip to a field or meadow.

But despite that, daisies always mean summer to me. Way back in the very early days of Postcard from Gibraltar, in July 2015 on one of our family trips back home to Manchester from Gibraltar during the school summer holidays I blogged about a lovely family outing we made into the Cheshire countryside. Amongst the delights on offer that day were a woodland walk, a picnic, creamy Cheshire ice cream and, you guessed it, a daisy chain. Living in Gibraltar at the time, there was very little access to ‘real’ grass due to the climate, and certainly no daisies, so they were a bit of a novelty.

You can find that blog post about Daisies and Damselflies here .

Fast forward to last year and we were enjoying our first summer in our new home in Manchester and what should pop up through the blades of grass in our new back garden lawn than a small but very welcome crop of daisies? As I was already in the mindset to try and turn any floral inspiration I found in my garden into something yarny and specifically amigurumi, there was absolutely no question that I had to make a daisy inspired doll.

Fortunately I had some yarn in my stash which fitted the bill perfectly for the job – a couple of balls left over from making Hope the Snowdrop and some yellow which had been bought with daffodils in mind (do you remember them?) and I was able to crack on pretty much immediately. Before long Daisy was beginning to take shape.

Hope the Snowdrop and Cariad & Dave the Daffodils

I actually had another inspiration for my Daisy too, she was a lovely lady who was full of fun and involved in everything going – my Great Aunt Daisy. Although not her actual name, she was known as Daisy from being young and was always Aunt Daisy to me.

She lived on the west coast of Scotland in a tiny little village, which although small, made up it for with a sense of community and boy did she squeeze every ounce of fun out of that community. She was involved with so many groups and events from country dancing to women’s groups. Sadly no longer with us (she would have been well over 100 if she was still around today) I initially set out on my Daisy crochet adventure with Aunt Daisy in mind.

I had thought to give her white hair and glasses befitting of a village elder, but this Daisy is youthful and no less great for it. I imagine she is never one to say no to turn around the dance floor and ready to squeeze every last ounce of fun out of life.

Yet again, my pattern is based on the amigurumi technique of crocheting in the round and is in UK crochet terms. It comes in a beautifully produced and illustrated version (thanks to my wonderfully talented childhood friend Emma from Emma Jackson Art) and a text-only printer friendly version too for those who prefer to work from paper patterns and perhaps scribble notes in the margins (like me). The Daisy pattern has been launched on my Etsy shop today and is available for immediate download.

I hope this inspires many Daisies to be made and that they all bring that same sense of fun with them out into the world. If you fancy capturing a bit of summer meadow or lawn which will last all year long you know what to do.

She’s a perfect project for stash busting – just four colours are required and she’s made using simple stitches which would be great for beginners.

You can find the pattern for sale in my Etsy shop which you can get to via this link.

Thank you so much for stopping by, and if you do make a Daisy of your own, please do let me know by either tagging me in on social media, use the hashtags #upthegardenpathdaisy or #upthegardenpathcrochet , or just send me a message to tell me – I would love to see where any Daisies start springing up!

Have a lovely day!

Lindsay x

Is it too late to say ‘Happy New Year!’?: A postcard from December

January 31, 2022January 31, 2022 ~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

Hello everyone, happy New Year! I know it’s a bit late but you know how it is, post Christmas and New Year business got in the way of planning this post. Better late than never – at least I managed this while it’s still January…….just!

I hope your festive period was ok. I know it’s still not completely how it used to be and for many people in particular it will have been difficult.

Here’s what I got up to at the end of last year…

New pattern releases

Following on from my patterns for Flora the Gardener and Hope the Snowdrop, in December I published the next two patterns in my Up the Garden Path collection. They are ‘Holly’ and ‘Ivy’.

They are both available to buy from my ETSY shop….

… and feature more beautiful illustrations by my very talented friend Emma – aren’t they adorable?!

I think Ivy has a look of Rula Lenska don’t you think?

Start as you mean to go on…

Last year’s New Year’s resolution was to try and design my own crochet patterns for the first time – which I’m thrilled that I managed to see through.

This time though, I don’t want to risk failing or setting the bar too high, so I haven’t made any resolutions as such. However, in late November I reacquainted myself with my Couch to 5K app. Throughout December I carried on with my thrice weekly runs, and was lucky enough to enjoy some beautiful, sunny mornings.

I’ve now (in January) completed all 9 weeks and am running 30 mins without stopping, which I’m thrilled about – I was built for crochet not speed!!

Booster-tastic

December also meant booster time for me. The previous time I visited this vaccination Centre, there were daffodils around the place. It was funny to be back again with the leaves which had just begun appearing last time now on the floor.

Podcast Christmas Special

My guests for the first Making Stitches Christmas Special (Clockwise from top left: Heather Griffith from HG Designs Crochet, Sara Huntington, Editor at Simply Crochet Magazine, some of the staff from Black Sheep Wools in Warrington, Kate Blackburn from WhatKatieDidUK, Louise Armitage aka Gini from Gini’s Dorset Buttons, Adam Brooks from Great British Sewing Bee & Louise Murray from Hooked by Lou.

You can find the podcast episode webpage here if you want to find out more.

Christmas crochet makes

A dinky Christmas tree from a Molly Makes pattern

As always it was a busy time for my hooks in the run up to Christmas… I made a couple of gifts and a new top for myself.

And… you know when you set yourself a slightly unrealistic target and have to burn the midnight oil to get it done? Well I decided at the last minute to make a Christmassy tank top…. I did get it finished in time, but the ends weren’t woven in in time for the day in question…. I hope no one noticed!

Tank Top modelled on the Vintage Granny Stripe cardigan by Fran Morgan from Simply Crochet Magazine.

Happy Post

The latest book published by Sarah Corbett from the Craftivist Collective

I bought myself a little early Christmas present in the form of this gorgeous book by Sarah Corbett all about the Canary Craftivist movement which got under way last summer. It even includes a photo I took of the Manchester Flock working on crafting their canaries sitting next to the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in the centre of Manchester back in July.

A Festive Walk

It was lovely to be able to return to Dunham Massey National Trust park and gardens over Christmas. It’s a fab place and just a short drive from where we live. It’s a place which instantly takes me back to my childhood and I love taking the Little Postcards there for a walk on a weekend or during the school holidays.

We got a great view of the resident deer and even spotted a couple of pure white ones.

Podcast New Year Special

(Clockwise from top left) The Crochet Sanctuary, Sarah Corbett from The Craftivist Collective, Gemma and Evie from the Manchester Flock, Mary Jane Baxter, Amanda from Mrs G Makes, Christine Perry aka Winwick Mum, Black Sheep Wools & Yarndale 2021.

I ended the year podcast-wise with a second Christmas Special which was released on New Year’s Eve. It featured my chats with Sarah Corbett from the Craftivist Collective, as well as Gemma and Evie from the Manchester Flock of Canary Craftivists, Mary Jane Baxter also made an appearance speaking about her epic trip around Europe in a camper van called Bambi stitching as she went. I looked back at my visit to the Crochet Sanctuary in Spring and to Yarndale in September last year, and heard from some of the staff at Black Sheep Wools in Warrington. I also included chats with two new friends of mine who I met last year; Christine Perry aka Winwick Mum who helped me on my sock-making adventure and Amanada from Mrs G Makes.

You can find the podcast web page here if you want to take a listen.

New Year’s Eve walk

We were treated to a stunningly beautiful and warm day on New Years’ Eve, and made the trip to Wigan to visit my brother and his wife. Just a short walk from their home is open countryside and it made for a very picturesque walk.

It was just the perfect way to end the year. In lovely company and enjoying lovely weather in the fresh air.

And that brings this rather late December round-up to an end. I promise I won’t be as tardy with my January post!

Thank you so much for stopping by and making it to the end of this rather epic post. I promise I’ll be back again soon!

Until then, take care,

Lindsay x

Sunday Postcard #27 16.5.21

May 16, 2021May 16, 2021 ~ Making Stitches ~ Leave a comment

Hello there! It’s been a while. I hope you’re ok. I went missing in action for a while there, there was no big reason, just didn’t feel the need to check into blogland. But I’m back, I just thought I’d pop in and say hi!

So what have I been up to lately? Well lots of stuff and nothing too. There has been some progress on unpacking the house (6 months after our move) thanks to a couple of trips to Ikea. However, despite this, the house seems to be a bigger mess than it was before for some reason. I guess we will get there in the end. There just seems to be so many other things which need doing too and progress on everything is slow. Here’s a quick recap on what I’ve been up to over the last few weeks…

I’ve been jabbed!

Last month, round about the time I went missing in action, I had my first Covid jab. I have to admit I didn’t have a great reaction to it as I was pretty unwell for a day or so – it felt a lot like when I had Covid last year – but I guess that means it’s working so I’m not complaining. Fingers crossed my next dose won’t have the same effect.

Football crazy

Football seems to have taken over my life in recent weeks. Littlest used to play for a team when we lived in Gibraltar and recently he got involved with a team over here in Manchester. We now have training twice a week and the possibility of two matches a week too to try to make up for lost time during the most recent lockdown. That may have had some bearing on my lack of visibility on here!! He’s loving it though, and the prospect of away matches means we have the perfect opportunity to explore some new locations not too far from home! This was my view from the touchline yesterday morning for his first ever match.

AmiguruMay

I have been taking part in the Instagram challenge by the talented amigurumi designer Ilaria Caliri called AmiguruMay this month. It’s given me the perfect opportunity to look back through my old photos to find my amigurumi creations of old! Here are a couple of old friends Rocksy & Gib! You can read about their exploits up the Rock here.

Podcast news

Blimey, I’ve been away so long that I’ve actually published not one, but two episodes of Making Stitches since I last checked in. The first was with a fellow blogger and hugely talented crochet designer Rosina of Zeens and Roger. Rosina and I started blogging around a similar time and have followed each other over the years, although Rosina has done very good things and achieved such a lot in the meantime!!

Episode 25 : Sarah Corbett from the Craftivist Collective

My next episode, which was published on Friday this week, features my conversation with the inspirational Sarah Corbett from the Craftivist Collective. I found our chat so inspiring and utterly fascinating. Sarah’s method of ‘gentle protest’ has had amazing results and she is keen for lots more crafters to get involved in her new project ahead of Cop26 in Glasgow this year.

You can listen to both of these episodes via this link.

In other news… I’ve been published!

I have been a fan and a subscriber to Simply Crochet magazine for years, and recently was given the opportunity to write an article for them. It was a call to action for crocheters to support their local yarn shops after this dreadful year of lockdowns and restrictions. I spoke to some lovely shop owners who were so generous with their time, and I feel very proud to have been published in this super magazine. Thank you Simply Crochet!

And that’s just about it for this postcard. Sorry I was away so long, I will try to do better next time! I hope life has been treating you kindly, and that you have a good week.

Until next time, take care.

Lindsay x

Cake Base

Cake Icing

The Square

Candle & Flame

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

The early days

Connecting with other bloggers

Sunday Sevens

A stroll around Gibraltar

A Postcard From…

Summer Craft Challenges

Big Changes

From Postcard from Gibraltar to Making Stitches

Crochet

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Goodbye Diamond

Amigurumay

A new garden project

Take That!!

On my hook

The Great Manchester 10K Run

Making Stitches Podcast is back for a new series!

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this:

Sharing is caring 🙂

Like this: