April 2025

Well it's now autumn here in New Zealand - or fall as the Americans call it - or spring up there in the southern hemisphere.

Our days are starting to draw in; it's getting a little chilly first thing in the morning and we've even had to light the fire on a couple of evenings!

I've been very busy so far this year. In January we visited Christchurch - I just love wandering around finding new places. In March I flew to Sydney to spend a few days with my 2 oldest friends. We have not been all together since September 2006 so we had a wonderful time. The photo above represents the 3 of us: Lorraine (Raine/UK) collects Winnie the Pooh. Jan (Sydney) collects Piglet and I used to collect Eeyore.

I flew in and out of Queenstown (definitely my favourite place in New Zealand). My OH decided to take a few days off and after a night in a wonderful Lodge, we had a few days each in Wanaka, Alexandra and Dunedin. Unfortunately on the last night in Dunedin we went for an Italian meal. I had a delicious pizza but then realised I had somehow managed to lose the front half of one of my rear molars. Trip to the dentist resulted in tooth being removed and I've just spent the last 2 weeks recovering as there was also an abscess under it. Antibiotics and strong painkillers resulted in me spending more than a few days in bed. Even now, almost 3 weeks later, the left side of my face is a little uncomfortable to the touch when applying moisturiser etc. I even had to take a short break from hooking!

The 2025 CAL (crochet-along) is now tested by the main (English) testers and is on its way out to the fabulous team of translators that Helen uses. It is on target for release as usual in September. I've done the usual full size using cakes plus a baby-size one, also using cakes. We will be visiting the UK August through to October so I've also made an additional baby sized one as a gift for a new baby in the family.

I'm currently testing again - this time for a blanket to be released in May. I thought I'd use 4 Black Friday cotton cakes I had for the full size one but I hadn't realised that they are only 800m instead of 1000m. So this morning I have had to order 2 x plain cakes to finish it off. I'm 2/3rds of the way through that one.

As usual, I've also done a baby size one and I'm now on the border of that one. I decided to use Stallion 8 ply for that. The white and beige (natural) I always have in my stash but when I came back from a trip to Sydney last month we called into the the Spotlight in Queenstown had some new/different colours in that yarn so I picked them up for the blanket. Of course, I ran out of two of the colours and as usual my local Spotlight was out of them. I had to order online and they were here very quickly so now I just have a couple of rounds to go. Of course, I find the Stallion 8 ply works up finer than my favourite Stylecraft Special DK so I use a 3.5mm hook instead of a 4mm hook so it works out smaller overall. This time instead of the round of sc and crab stitch that Helen had recommended in the pattern, I have repeated a previous section before doing the sc and crab stitch. I love crab stitch as a edging as I feel it gives a lovely crisp finish.

I've decided to start adding all my completed blankets to this website (excluding the testers as the patterns are released yet). The prices shown will be without postage and will also be in New Zealand dollars (NZD).