Bigger and Better

The snail-like progress towards having a craft room of my own continues. This past weekend Rose and I (mostly Rose) powered our way through a massive list of 'things to do so that I can move on to the painting stage', paying particular attention to things I can't manage on my own. There was a lot of filling holes; Rose did lots of little ones, like these round the window ...

I only had one hole to fill but it was a big one ...

A bit rough and ready but at least you can't see the brick wall through it now.

We also painted the shed and Rose painted the high up bit of the back wall that I can't reach.

I'm now wrestling with paint colour choices; luckily I can order that to be delivered as I can't walk very far again at the moment and definitely couldn't carry a tin of paint.

The thinking and planning for what I want in the room is a continuous process. I want to upgrade the things that I use for work regularly so as to make the difficult things easier and more efficient. With this in mind, I have just bought some new, super-dooper giant blocking mats.

For many years I've been using a set of children's play mats to block all  my knitting and crochet.

They do the job and are easy to store but they're a bit thin and the letters have a nasty habit of falling out and getting lost. Also, the bright colours mean that I can't really use them as a background for photography which is a pain. My new mats are thick, white and huge; this is just one of them with the old ones on top.

Look at those lovely square edges. The mats come with sets of edging strips so that you can use them right up to the edge.

As you can see, there's plenty of room to block four squares at a time on just one mat and I've got eight more, enough for the biggest blanket. The mats came from Provenance Craft Co., an exciting new (to me) online shop and you can get them in various sets. I'm also trying their blocking pins which are made of black enamelled steel. Even the pretty little tin came from Provenance.

The fact that the mats are thicker than most makes them easier to move around when linked together and I think you could stand them up too. With a bit of wadding pinned to them this could turn them into a quilt design wall. 

I joined four mats together to lay my mosaic crochet squares on when planning my colour layout but I shall need more mats once I've added the border.

I'm very excited about this particular project. I'm crocheting the squares together now and, as I add each row, it's really coming to life.