Rainy Days Happen Too

Hello, dears! Thanks for all your wishes  for my good health :) I'm better now physically and mentally. I was a little disappointed as the full Moon didn't charge me with strength and energy as usually.  May be the weather wasn't as good, because the days kept on switching from sunny and warm to rainy. Yesterday was so gloomy and wet, but today it's sunny and the sky is clear. Now I look forward to seeing what happens tomorrow, may be the rain fall again. 

Being away from blogging for a while I decided to take the snaps of what I was up to yesterday, because the rest of the week wasn't remarkable. Here comes the cloudy sky. I was not up to it, but I was standing under it, amazed by the force which was accumulated up there. 

 My dear lettuce however was feeling well, since it was gaining more juice into its leaves. You can see that the soil wasn't able to soak such amount of water anymore as it never dried in the past three weeks. I thought that all my small plants will simply rotten, but they seem keep up fine after all.

 Another treasure from my parents' dacha - fennel. I do love different herbs, so I hope that this fellow will be able to make it to a fully grown plant, if the sun will be merciful in March.

 Yesterday I finally threw out the roses my D gifted for V's day. No, actually I didn't threw all of their parts and left these beautiful petals. I'm drying them now, having no idea for what purpose :) I simply like their look and color.

I took that picture of the lettuce in the morning, and in the evening I made a simple salad out of it with beans and garden grown green onion. The salad was almost purely made of our own veggies, if consider that I used few beans of our harvest too. My Mum suggested me to make such salad with a very simple dressing consisting of vinegar, olive oil and some herbs. You can also add mustard, but I preferred to go without it. I liked the salad, my D didn't eat it, he doesn't like the taste of lettuce anyway. Rest of the family tried it, but no feedback so far :) 

Me and my D are planning to have a short trip somewhere. I really want it, got tried of the city and I hope this dream will come true.

The Crochet Lounge meet didn't happen last Sunday, and we are planning to meet this Sunday, I hope for sure this time. It appears a little more difficult as it seemed in the beginning, but we will break through. I have reached 99 followers so far, and my D promised that we would celebrate when I reach 100 :) Isn't he sweet? Thanks to all of you, dears, who actually make my blogging possible and so much enjoyable.

Have a lovely day! Just two more days of work, and then a weekend:) Yey!

A Long Yet Productive Weekend

Long weekends in my case happen unexpectedly. After our happy V's day, I simply had to add a bit of cold, cough and a little fever in our life, so that we don't relax. Hey, I haven't been that badly ill, but unwell enough to skip my office yesterday. I hate being in such condition, because you can't actually do anything properly. Even crafting becomes so slow, and I didn't feel like doing any new posts. I'm sorry if I didn't comment on yours; I tried to visit your blogs and see what was going on there. And there were crafty things, homely things, flowers, colors, thoughts, books...I  enjoyed all those!

It's been my aim for a long time to create lovely covers for the boxes, in which, you know, you keep all those bits of this and that. I had made one, but at that time it took me so much efforts to crochet it, and still it came out way too broad for a box. Now being slightly more experienced in crochet, I made two of such covers in just a couple of hours, and they fitted perfectly well. Don't even ask me what I keep in these boxes, but everything is very useful :)

So those I made during first two days of my long weekend. How was Monday remarkable then? I had a Russian style lunch prepared with my very Russian hands! Indian food is very tasty, but honestly, I got bored of it these days and searched for a change in taste. The salad in smaller dish is sour cabbage, which is a Russian recipe too. It is very simple yet tasty product rich in vitamin C, and I can easily make it out of Indian cabbage and carrot. Those lettuce leaves is my garden's pride.

You must have looked at my next picture by now, but this isn't just a dishcloth you seeing. I've been dreaming of starting a crochet group in our city since the day I discovered all the advantages of this craft. Finally the first steps were made, and we had a gathering of the Crochet Lounge last weekend. There were only two of us, me and my friend J, nevertheless we enjoyed interaction and had such a great Sunday afternoon. We hope that our friends will join us this weekend.

This dishcloth is the first project we had as a home task (hehe). I never tried to crochet in the back loops before, so here is my wavy dish cloth :) Let's see what J will make.

Here is a poster I created for our Lounge. I might add more details about this project later or even change it, but it's going to be like this for the time being. I guess I will be making a weekly post about our activities and projects. I know there are many lovely crochet groups and communities out there, virtual and real, but there is nothing like this in our city,. Let's see how it goes, I'm very excited!

 Thanks for your nice comments on the last V's day's post, I'm happy to take you along with me always. Now I'm off to reading "Anna Dressed in Blood" story by Kendare Blake... yea, it's not only flowers and butterflies and... crochet :).

Have a nice day, dears, take care!

A Day Of Love and Happiness

My dears, your Valentine's day wishes worked as magic for me, because we had an enjoyable and a happy day. I hope yours was the same and even better! I have many things to share with you today, so make a cup of tea or coffee for yourself and get ready for my V's day's adventures :)

That was one of those days when only good things happen. Here I want to say a BIG Thank You to dear Tanya from Bead and Needle! I don't know why I deserved this, but she wished to send me a small gift, which reached my house within a week, all the way from US to India! Unbelievable! Not only she is a versatile blogger, who always shares her interesting trips,she is also a wonderful crafter! Yes, you are ;) Thanks for these beautiful potholders in such lovely fabrics!

The potholders were packed in this lovely paper. I opened the parcel when my D came back home. He knew I was waiting for it to come so I wanted to share my happiness with him of course.

My D liked Tanya's gift very much too; when I said that she made it all herself, he kept on asking how she managed to overlap fabrics in such manner, I said I had no idea, but it was an artist's secret :)

A gift of a friend is precious, moreover, the distance is not an issue ( I know it by own love story ) when you really wish something with the whole heart. This fabric made me smile. I'm sorry, Tanya, they are too good to use them, but I will definitely decorate one of the dinner tables with them some day :)

My husband doesn't gift me flowers every day, otherwise it would have become boring, but when it's my B'day or V's day, or any other romantic reason, he always brings some cute bouquet. Like this one :) He said that flower sellers refused delivering it straight to my office, because they had too much work load anyway. So my D went, I know that hurriedly, to buy this roses in the evening, mystically disappearing from the house for about 20 min while I was making tea for him. He is so clever and... so sweet :) A remark: today is 2 years and 8 months of our marriage, yes, we count months too, as we don't want to lose any of such special day for both of us. I read a very beautiful and inspiring post at Mrs. Micawber's blog. How to keep love through ages, how to stay with your loved one no matter what, we shall learn from such stories :)      now...

A good evening was on our cards. We went to the City heart, sector 17,  for a walk. It was crowded there, and I didn't feel like taking the pictures. But what I wanted to show was the Indian New Moon, which is reversed.

I will not be telling you about all our roaming in the city in search for a restaurant, because all of them were literally packed, and the wait time they were giving us was minimum 1 hour... However even this was pleasant because we were together and when I'm with my D, I enjoy every moment of our time. Finally, we ended up in sector 17 again when my D drove there from another side, where there were few good restaurants. Yey! We chose the one called "Ghazal". Ghazal is a poetic form originated from Arabic verse. 

 Though my D had doubts for a second, later he liked the place very much, so did I. It was exotic for both of us because of its interior and the ghazal songs filling the air with their relaxing and melancholic tune.

We weren't disappointed with the menu as well.. and now the moment of temptation - our dinner. It was delicious - chicken shashlyk sizzler, paneer lababdar, rotis, and pickles!

 We left this nice place around 11 in the night. This is the entrance. You can see an Urdu word from the right side of the picture meaning "the pub". I thought we would take here my parents when they visit India next time.

 I liked being out at late hour... It was quiet, and deserted, but we were together and no matter what, we were happy. We are (touch wood).

I hope you liked experiencing these moments with me. I'm glad I have all of you, dears, who are always ready to support, encourage and simply be happy for me

Have a happy weekend filled with love! Blessings to all of you wherever you are.

Hearty Crochet

My dears, hope you are doing great! I shall admit that I've been a little busy lazy in the first half of February. Perhaps the waning moon made me such, and  I hope it'll give a charge of new strength as it's in its growing phase now. I also put a moon phases widget on the left side bar. It is very useful for choosing the best days for planting. My little garden hasn't been productive so far, the beans didn't give any valuable harvest, and I'm waiting for this weekend to plant them again. 

I had pretty nice marigolds last year, so I sowed them again, but found out one sunny morning that the birds, who are living on our citrus tree, impertinently pulled out some sprouts and plucked first tender leaves from others! This was the moment when I turned to an angry bird myself... and covered my precious plants with thin cotton cloths. Now I do this every morning, and remove the cloth in the evening.

Hey, but I gave a crochet title to this post and still chatting about my garden issues. Well, to the business. Tomorrow is St. Valentine's day, and I just couldn't stop making hearts the whole week. After the first stripy heart, I made two more. I took the pictures in the morning. It was windy, and hearts kept on swinging, so I was able to catch only few still moments, when finally settled them on the cloth. 

This blue heart is filling my cupboard with eucalyptus fragrance... sorry, I don't have lavender in my stash now.

This one was gifted to my friend today. What I like the most in making of these hearts is that you can use leftover yarn, combine any colors - they seem to look nice together anyway. By the way, I made a pattern for these hearts as well. A Stuffed Cheshire Heart Sachet pattern is a free download which you can find here if interested.

So, this was my hearty crochet and hearty wishes of a good day to you, dears!

 Have a fabulous 14th of February (and other days too;)), have fun, Love and Be Loved!

Truth About Crocheter's Evenings... :)

Hello, dears! Hope you weekend is going on well. I had only one day off this week, but still I'd share some new projects, right, but also some truth about my crochet evenings, like the one I had yesterday for example.
Saturday evening is the best, because you know that tomorrow is Sunday, what means no work, sleeping till noon (in worse cases even more), and you can actually relax. :) So why not to party? I did a little as you can see, with a glass of beer and some pretty yarn colors. I usually don't eat or drink while crocheting, but today it's Saturday, okay. (and in no case I promote drinking while crafting or otherwise!please).
I made 5 squares, no mistakes have been found so far :).

Continuing with Valentine's day's crafts,  I made this stuffed stripy heart which will serve as a lemongrass fragrant sachet for my D's cupboard. I admit that this heart was inspired by Lucy's Heart Hanger, Linda's Sweet Lacy Hearts, Lilli's Crocheted Heart and few others which kept appearing in the Internet in different shapes and colors. I decided to make a Cheshire heart, stripey like a cat :)

I also colored few pebbles with nail polish I'm not going to use anymore. Let's see where I can find a place for them. This is the pattern for the Stuffed Cheshire Heart as a free download.

Have a happy day and a bright successful week ahead! Don't forget, love is all around!
And a Happy Chinese New year!

Little Hearts and A Walk in the City Heart

One week has passed by, another week. Not a significant one, there was a little bit of this and that, as usual... waking up in the morning, going to office, then coming back and waiting for my D to come too, then having tea (or having it later), watching movie... By the way we watched a very good film "Gandhi", in which Ben Kingsley plays the main role (of Gandhi of course:)). May be some of you saw it, but if you didn't, do watch it, you'll definitely recognize many famous actors.
Today I had a nice walk in the lunch time. It was sunny, warm and a pleasant weather overall. This is so called "city heart", sector 17, which is the central part of the city and most popular place to hang out and shop.

Huge trees grow there, I'm fascinated by their trunk, which reminds me veins or even limbs of a human...

Last year this was the time when I renewed my crochet hobby, and the first thing I made was a stuffed Valentine's heart for my D. This year I'm still thinking what I can make for him, perhaps Cheburashka will be to the purpose, or may be better let it go and have a spontaneous Valentine's day? Let's see. 

Yesterday, however I made myself to sit and make at least some little hearts to decorate the rooms. Somehow I got into the mood of "all lovers' day"  as we call it in my native country.

If you wish to make these hearts, I prepared a pattern with some pictures. Hope you will find it useful in anticipation of a holiday, as it's a quick and easy project, which makes it suitable for beginners as well (oh, sounds like I'm already a mature crocheter). I made this pattern while I was in the office (yea, I have a damn interesting job!lol) so photos might seem to be taken from hiding ... what is actually true.
Little Hearts Pattern:
Ch4, join in ring
Ch1, 6sc in ring, join in first ch1
Ch3 (counts as dc), dc in same st, [2dc in next st] 2 times, in next st make [dc, picot, dc] - made heart's pointed bottom; [2dc in next st] 3 times. Join in the base of first ch3. Make a loop for hanging the heart :)

Here is how you can make a loop so that to hang the heart anywhere you want. 

In the end I came up with 6 hearts - not bad for one working day :)

I made these yesterday. I like red and orange ones especially. 

Have a hearty weekend, my dears! Sending loads of warmness and best wishes your side!

Colorful Sunny Morning :)

Hello, dears! Hope your week was going on well, and see, we are already at the end of it, thank God, and in the beginning of a new month. I was feeling a bit sad these days as I miss my parents very much, and I know that they also do. However I'm already planning my trip home, which hopefully will happen in the summer. 

As of now I'm indulging myself in crochet. I'm slowly accomplishing Cheburashka, BUT... I've been itching to show you my flower granny square blanket progress! I must say that I did a pretty good start to it, and came up with 20 colorful squares in just 4 days. The pattern Flower Granny Square by The Sunroom you can find here. 

I thought it'll be good to take my work out in sunshine, so I grabbed the camera and granny squares, and   the magic began as the beauty of the colors revealed in front of me. 

From another side... I enjoyed taking the photos, and feeling warmness of the Sun.

Some of my favorite color combinations. I like how sunshine backlights yarn.

My beauties! I'm sorry for such self  granny adoration but this is the best feeling when you like what you do and like the result of it :) (yea, yesterday our neighbours obtained that satellite plate which got some limelight too, haha).

That is not it as I had something else waiting to get sunshine too. A Rastafarian slouchy cap I made as another custom crochet project. The first such cap I made and would like to make same for my husband or myself (ego crochet, remember?) 

Today is my FIL's birthday, so Happy Birthday to him and many many happy years ahead! :)

Have a colorful weekend, my dears, and I'm so happy that my previous post made many of you excited about visiting India (or wanting to try Maharajah sandwich ;), and even awoke memories related to this country.