Pass the Book Giveaway, Beautiful Skies, and a Bit More of The Blanket...

I'm a little late with passing on the book - that's because the dog ate it! Only kidding (we don't have a dog)...

Emma of Silver Pebble started this pass the book giveaway away back in June. I was the fortunate winner, as I mentioned here. I have read the book (Cranford), enjoyed it, have even bought the DVD to watch one wintry evening, and, now that I have found the book again (ahem!), I am ready to pass it on, along with a few other goodies.

Here is what is on offer...


First Prize
The Book - a lovely red pocket sized edition of Cranford for you to read and pass on.
Some birdy flowery stationery - pencil box, A5 hardback spiral bound notepad, sticky notes.
A couple of glassy things made by me - a glass glob fridge magnet and a glass bead bracelet.
I would have like to have made a leaded candleholder/suncatcher but I'm afraid I just don't have time at the moment and don't want to delay things even more. I will however make a batch of tablet so the pencil box will arrive filled with delicious buttery Scottish tablet (you need a sweet tooth to like it!).

First Runner Up
Tablet filled pencil box, small spiral bound birdy notebook, sticky notes

A Couple More Runners Up (the exact number depends on how much tablet I manage not to eat myself!)
Tablet

If you're interested in participating, please have your own blog, and leave a comment on this post. The winners will be drawn from a hat, entries close midnight of Saturday 4th September. The winner reads the book and passes it on "along with a nice something or other. Some chocolate, some seeds or a small hand-made something will do very well indeed." Good Luck!

We are lucky to have quite an open outlook from the house looking Westwards and we've been having some lovely skies here lately.

Above is the sky yesterday afternoon...

...later that evening it developed into this beautiful sunset...

...and this morning (just before school) we had a gorgeous clear blue sky.

I like the sky contrasted with one of our two sheds (which I've almost finished painting!)

Tomorrow is to be nice again and my bike is ready - I can't wait to get back out on it again.

If you can bear it, here is yet another blanket update. Can you spot the difference between the next two photos?

I really didn't like one of the hexagons I'd added recently. To me it just looked so wrong. There are a few I'm not actually too keen on, but this particular one just kept leaping out at me. I've been joining as I go so it was fairly straightforward to remove the offending hexagon and replace it with a much less obtrusive one.

Here's a big clue as to which one was replaced...


I've also been adding some crochet photos to Flickr. I'm still very much a Flickr novice but I'm really enjoying finding out more about how it all works. I can spend ages browsing all the inspiring photos like-minded people have added. Whatever your style is you can easily find something you'll appreciate. Once you add photos, join a group which looks relevant and share - people are so generous with positive comments, it's quite motivating and inspiring! One thing I saw mentioned a few times is Flickr Explore. I didn't know what it was but this site (from BigHugeLabs) explains things and also helps you check whether any of your photos have made it. I tried it out...

... it seems to like my blanket close-ups!

BigHugeLabs is also what I use to make my photo mosaics. I edit my photos so that they're square, upload them to Flickr and put them in a set (usually I do a 3x3 mosaic, so 9 photos), I then use BigHugeLabs with the Flickr photoset option to select my photos and that's pretty much it. It's free too, it's also very addictive, you have been warned!