Ta-Dah! Gorgeous Garland! And other stuff!

This is most exciting as I am writing this post using the blogger app on my new Samsung phone! Much easier as I have automatic access to my photo albums! And when I had accidentally hit the back button after uploading the photos, it automatically saved it to draft! Well impressed!

Firstly, a bit of news! I have recently been learning to play the piano! Have said I would love to for years so pulled my finger out and found myself a piano teacher! I really enjoy it, my teacher is wonderful as she enables me to believe in myself and I will be working my way through the ABRSM Grades! I can now play the first few phrases of Mozart's Minuet in G (which by the way he wrote at the age of 5!) and I am totally chuffed that I can make my hands do different things at the same time - very hard!

So how pleased was I, upon mentioning my lessons on Twitter, to be offered a free piano by a wonderful Twitter friend who I met at a craft show (very nice)! Her parents really wanted to get rid of it so all I had to do was to arrange delivery! Thank you again lovely friend!

It is a bit chipped, but if you know me you know I love a bit of rustic! And it does need tuning but is playable so not too bad I think! My boyfriend and I had such fun re-organising the lounge to squeeze it in!! *coughs*

I love it to bits and I now really enjoy practising!! (My cat loves it too!) I also discovered that it doubles up a a garland organising surface!

The down side to my piano was that a TV was suddenly introduced into our bedroom! I had no bargaining power as I had not particularly said much about the piano to him until it arrived! So, instead of a little TV that would fit nicely on top of the drawers, we now have a 40" TV mounted on the wall!! It's bigger than the one in the lounge! Aaaand we also have Sky up there!! I have renamed our bedroom - Cinebedroom!!

Now for my Ta-Dah! 

I was inspired some time ago by cupcakejojo's heart garland, it is absolutely beautiful and is perfect for her fireplace that she had then!

Recently I discovered that there is such a thing as a 'Lucy pack' of Stylecraft Special DK, you can get it from Deramores and Country Crafts, I found the link on Lucy's blog- Attic24 . There are 17 beautiful colours, the yarn is the softest and smoothest acrylic yarn I've ever touched and the added bonus is it's cheap!! Actually, I think there's only 16 beautiful colours as I didn't like the jadey green one!!

With all these wonderful colours I could not wait to start a big blanket project, perhaps hexies, but I really need to finish a baby blanket I am making for my neice/nephews arrival in November! So I thought I would whip up a quick project, although it wasn't as quick as I'd have liked! I wanted it to be something for my lounge as all the different, pretty colours that are slowly appearing in my lounge bring warmth and happiness! I don't think I'll be completely satisfied until I have a house as colourful as Lucy's from Attic24!!

I have a penchant for the granny stitch, whether it's a square, a stripe, a hexagon or a ripple! So how pleased was I with my love of hearts to discover this granny heart pattern! I have already made a garland with this pattern for my auntie but ever since I saw cupcakejojo's garland I knew this would be the one for my version of it!

I tried daisy shaped flowers but it wasn't quite right for me so I found a rose pattern on Attic24's blog which were very easy to make, I also have future plans with these roses too! I thought her leaves were too fat so I used the leaf pattern from Mollie Makes, Issue 3.

I did block the hearts and the leaves. Well I say I blocked, I just ironed them with a towel over. I don't have enough patience for pinning everything! It was enough! I should have ironed all the leaves before I stitched them on as had to fiddle around with the iron after!

I think that's enough info about the making of my garland! It's about time I showed you!!

Ta-Dah!

(I soon discovered whilst using this app that I can only have all my photos in a row at the end of the post. Plus linking is practically impossible so I will have to go on the laptop anyway to link everything! At least I can draft on here!)