Face Cloths, Disasters and Other Things

 Hi everyone, hope you are all OK out there in Blogland, I have had a traumatic couple of weeks! I've been about on 'tinterweb, but not for a significant enough amount of time to be able to do a blog post!

I warn you this is a bit of a rambling post and if you only come here to see crochet whizz down to the bottom now! However, if you have time, make a coffee and have a read, it will make your week seem a lot better :-)

Right, where shall I start? Errrrrmm let me see.

Well, lets start at the very beginning, I've heard it's a very good place to start!

The cold tap in my kitchen started to drip and then to trickle. No problem I thought, I am not stupid and can change a tap washer. Under the sink I go to turn off the stopcock, it refused to turn no matter how hard I tried, but I moved on to plan B, the outside stopcock! Opened the little flappy thing (I never said I was good on technical terms!) no stopcock just a hole full of mud! I managed to get rid of some of the mud but still no stopcock! Time to phone a friend, I thought!
Along comes G a male friend since our kids were small and purely platonic! G tries the stopcock in the kitchen but doesn't want to force it, then proceeds to go down the outside hole as far as his arm can reach, still no stopcock! He turned the tap in the kitchen so it didn't drip, which meant I couldn't use it so had to go upstairs to fill up jugs!

I rang the plumber who said he could come in a couple of days!

Meanwhile upstairs, my boiler (obviously hearing that the plumber was coming and wanting a bit of the attention) began to leak and soaked or made damp ALL the towels in my airing cupboard :-( As it is a combination boiler it also meant I had no hot water for showers etc so it meant boiling a kettle, which was OK as the plumber was coming. I rang him and told him about the boiler so all was well. Hahahahaha! They say things come in threes;

"What's that wet patch on the kitchen ceiling Mum?"
"What wet patch on ................ *&%$*& !!!!!!!!"

Off I dash upstairs to the bathroom and discover that the toilet (obviously hearing about the plumber and wanting in on the action had decided to leak too!) Fortunately I was able to turn the little screwy thing that let water into the cistern, mop up the floor and instruct the children to use the other toilet. Then I rang the plumber!
"No problem" he said, obviously adding up pounds in his head and booking a holiday!

So all was well, we got jugs of water from upstairs, to fill the kettle for hot water to wash, after all the plumber was coming.

The plumber came, he had to order a part for the boiler but did a temporary fix so I had hot water, he fixed the leaking pipe to the toilet cistern, he attempted to turn off the stopcock in the kitchen ..... it wouldn't budge! He went outside and lifted the flappy thing and looked down the hole.
" Hmmm I can't see it either, not to worry I have a gadget that goes a long way down and turns off the stopcock, it's on my son's van though so if you can manage I'll bring it when I come with the boiler part in a couple of days"

So off he went, that was the Friday. I'd had my three events, two were fixed or almost fixed all was under control!

Are you still with me or have you dozed off?

On Sunday the toilet started filling up when we flushed!!!! I lifted the manhole cover in the back garden, the drains were backed up (sorry), I rang the plumber and said could he come Monday and not wait till boiler part came, yes he said, upgrading his holiday!

That was four disasters now, that was my fair share, surely!

But oh no! Let's hit a woman when she's down! Younger son who had been away for the weekend came back with raging toothache, I dosed him up with painkillers and on Monday morning got him an emergency dental appointment .......... on the Tuesday!!! Stupid dentist how is that an emergency appointment? But not having a car, I was a bit stuck.

The plumber arrived on Monday, unblocked the drains, brought the long gadgety thing, broggled about down the hole and managed to turn the stopcock off, hooray!!!!
He fixed the tap in the kitchen so all was well (apart from the new part for the boiler that came later and was fitted). So now I had a fixed boiler, toilet and tap and my drains were back to normal. Just the toothache and we'd be good to go!

Off we trotted to the dentist on Tuesday morning, no cavities but a gum infection!!! So antibiotics were prescribed, along with mouth wash and painkillers and a strict lecture from both the dentist and myself on brushing teeth and the perils of not doing do. The week progressed, so did the pain!! We went back to the dentist got more antibiotics and eventually he was back to normal.

By this point in the week I was a quivering wreck, still fitting work in and a first aid course and doing other motherly things. Crochet just hasn't happened this week neither has posting :-( but hopefully that is my share of disasters for a while and things can get back to normal.

If anyone is still with me at this point, well done, better things to come, keep reading!

Firstly crocheted face cloths!

 To be honest I was a bit doubtful about crocheted face cloths, make that very doubtful. The words crochet and face cloth or flannel, didn't seem to go together at all! But having seen them in Simply Crochet and elsewhere I started to wonder. Then I saw the Stylecraft Classique Cotton and decided to have a go.
I bought a ball of Ivory and one of Sky Blue and got cracking. The Stylecraft was much less 'splitty' than the RICO cotton yarn I have used before, which I was pleased about as I found I couldn't get a rhythm going with the RICO. In fact I really liked working with the Stylecraft it was 'easy on the hook' if you get what I mean.
The cloths were very quick to make and I whipped up these three in an evening. I don't think I'll do a stripy one again though because of all the ends!

When I'd finished and taken the photographs I did a 'wet' test. I mean what is the point of a face cloth if its not good when its wet! I thought they may be quite bulky compared to a commercial towelling face cloth but I was pleasantly surprised, they felt lovely. Also after it had dried I found that it was softer than ever and felt lovely on my skin. This could be the way to go in the beauty regime department!

I'm also loving my new app Diptic which lets me do all of these fancy dancy photo layouts! I was told about it by Ada at Vintage Sheet Addict (thanks Ada), she said it was easy and it is, it has to be for a techy challenged person like myself! So, I've been playing a bit. There are a few areas I'm not sure about, like making the text larger. Not sure if its me or if you just can't do it!

Ooh I like this!

From my garden this morning.

 The above was from my dog walking, look at that cheeky frog top right, looking at me and posing! The pond was full of frogs looking for someone to get friendly with.


And lastly a bit of Crofter square progress but it's quite damp and dismal here today so the light isn't very good for taking photographs. There will be better ones soon and hopefully I will be able to take one of the wiggly worm crochet project, that isn't a worm at all!

If you made it to the end of this post, Well Done! If you just read the crochet bits I hope you like them.

Please feel free to comment, I know there are a lot of lurkers out there and it does make my day when someone visits and leaves a few words. Oh and please let me know if you like the new banner. I really appreciate all the people that do leave comments, thanks very much and see you next time :-)


PS I figured out how to make text larger on Diptic ......... it was so simple doh!