Here comes the Summer!

How about this for a lovely summery start to this blog update? :) I just love this time of year so much - we've had a run of a few days of really glorious weather so I've been busy sitting outdoors with my crochet whenever I can and trying to make the most of it. I'm off work today and I've got another 'garden' day penciled in once I've finished on here and got the few bits of housework done out of the way.

I thought I'd add a few photos of what I've been working on since my last post on this blog - the hat at the top is made from my massive 2kg cone of Studio Donegal wool -- that wool just went on for ever and ever! I was able to make seven flower headbands, three beanie hats and nine slouchy hats and there's still enough of it left for one more hat (if not another headband too!) Next time I ever get a 'wholesale' order for several hats I would definitely buy the wool in bulk like that - it was really intimidating to see how big the cone was when it arrived and I felt like I was never going to use it all up but it was a great way to bulk-buy wool.

I still must get around to listing those purple crocodile stitch wristers - writing the listings and taking photos of the items is something I really don't enjoy half as much as actually making the items themselves! The cotton bath mitt is to replace a similar one that just sold (to the lovely Mary Ruth in America), and I've sold some scrubbies just recently too so have remade and relisted them too.

Talking about sales in my Etsy shop, I can't quite believe it but I am not just SEVEN sales away from my 600th! Can you believe it? My very first sale was on the 11th July, 2010 - if you look at my profile on Etsy it says that I opened my shop there in March that year, but it wasn't til the end of June/start of July that I actually started to list items on there -- my first ever sale was a pair of wrist warmers  (to my best friend Carrie, up in Northern Ireland) and it's nice to think that four years later, I'm still making and selling pretty much the same things :)

I'd really love it if I managed to make the big 600 sales benchmark by the 11th July this year but things seem to have slowed down in my shop recently so it could go either way -- I'm not really going to be that upset if it doesn't happen by that date; these things happen when they happen and there's no point in worrying about it! 

My day-job on the ferry is starting to get busy now - last weekend was a bank holiday in the UK and this weekend is a bank holiday here -- but the weather has just been so glorious that even when we're busy it's still lovely.

 I just LOVE it whenever we have vintage car rallies on the ferry! The cream car is a Hummer from 1924!

..and this is my first full load of the season (the first of many)