The Small Joys of Stationery Shopping

   Yuppiee, I am doing my 10th post in September, which is not common as I usually come up with only 8-9 posts a month. Today I wanted to tell about my small joys I get here in India. This week I discovered few stationery shops near my office in sector 17. It means that now I don't have to go especially to any other sector for purchase of crafty supplies and can buy them in my lunch time or after office hours :) These stationery shops are mainly "built in" the book stores. First time I went there with my nice colleague and friend J, she is also a foreigner married to an Indian. I bought these nice wrap paper sheet, my friend approved the choice. I really enjoy their designs!

                               

                               

                               

  Today I went shopping again and picked up 8 colorful craft tapes and three pens and paid 70 rupees for all. I mean to say that the stationery in India is very cheap and this is my joy too :) I was longing also to buy "craft scissors" as I call them. How happy I was when found a set of four such scissors with zigzag, cloud, wave and mountain shaped razors. However I didn't want to buy so many of them straight away and continued searching for a single item. I ended up buying these awesome colorful zigzag scissors from another shop. Oh well, there is loads of stuff left over there still, so will plan another "trip" sometime later ;) 

                                

                               

                                

***Have a joyful weekend ahead!***

Decorating tables - granny square doily and an oval mat

    September is not a productive month for me in sense of blogging. It is more productive on the crafty side. Last Saturday I went to our 42 market stationery shop to purchase some crafty things like acrylic paints, paper cutter, craft paper, pencils... It looked like no one else  was buying all that stuff from there for long time, because the acrylic paints were manufactured in 2011 and the sheet of craft paper was looking a little old... but I liked the things I bought anyway. I couldn't wait to use at least some of them. I did a painting in the evening of the same day and was doing it like a mad! My husband must have been worried indeed :) Kidding. Besides the painting I finally accomplished two of the crochet projects: a long-time-ago-started table mat and another granny square doily. 

     Here is my granny square doily. The yarn is some old Indian thread, I am not sure whether it's acrylic or mixed. So you can say I re-purposed this yarn and made a new crochet decor piece from it:). Principe of making was the same as for my first granny square doily. The granny square pattern has a unique quality - it can be of any wished size and it is so easy to make.Yup, the granny square is twisted again.

                             

  

    I truly like the granny square stitches - all double crochet (treble crochet). The chess like arrangement of the stitches makes the whole piece look so snug ( that's why it is called "granny", isn't it?).

   I played with the doily choosing some interesting variants of its folding and usage. I think that this could become a pretty baby blanket or a nice pillow cover. Keeping it in mind ;)

      I am not very used to make crochet tutorials, I have only two so far, but I am thinking to make one more on how to make a simple crochet flower like the one in the picture below. 

  Ta-dah! Or did it take too long since the last post about my table mat? Whatever, the crochet table mat is ready to be used for placing a cup of coffee on it in the morning (for example):)

  Please, refer to the oval motif pattern below. However, I'd like to make few notes: the pattern is going on good until the 5th row as in the picture, then you have to adjust it counting the number of increased stitches from all four sides. It's the toughest in this pattern. I think I kind of changed the pattern and made it more square rather than oval.

  Overall  I am very content about my craftiness these days and I have some MORE crochet projects in my mind.

 ***Have a crafty week and take care!***