Hexies, life and an opinion, please.

Ever get that feeling that the more you do, the less you achieve?

I thought I had been crafting lots lately but when I sit down to document what I had done, I couldn't think of anything!  Isn't it funny that the busier you, the more you feel that you could do more but in fact, you aren't really achieving anything.

So, what have I been doing?  Well, here in Australia,  it's Summer and in February school started again. This year, Joe started his second year of school, Prep (he turned 5 in December). So before school started we did the usual family stuff and included a daytrip to Coal River Farm where we had fun picking strawberries and checking out their chickens.

Would you just check out how big Joe is getting, where oh where did my lil baby boy go?

And, geesh... look at my little Laney!  How adorable is she?!!

Do you love her bonnet? She certainly does, I got it from here and she never takes it off! 

Also, you would not believe what happened to me. 
My life on my laptop was destroyed: every single document, file, picture & pattern etc on my computer was 'hijacked' and 'held to ransom'. Yep, somehow a virus jumped onto my computer and some nasty person had developed a virus that 'steals' all your files so that you can't use them. You think you can use them, as you can see them but you can't open them. They want me to pay them money to be able to access my own things. Crooks. Thieves. .... NEVER.
So, we decided to not stress about it and we wiped everything from our computer by setting it back to it's factory defaults.
Everything is gone.
Every freaking thing. 
Every picture.
Every note.
Every pattern that I had purchased for knitting, crochet & sewing.
Everything. 
I had even written some patterns and was about to release one with another about to be tested but nope, they are gone.

So, here is a plan for the future:

~ Save everything that you download onto your computer straight into cloud storage. There are many to choose from, google them to best find what is suited to your needs.

~ When buying stuff that you download, try to buy from the same places like Etsy, Ravelry, Craftsy that way all your patterns are stored in central location, ready for you to access. I went through my old emails to find where I had bought stuff and would you believe the amount of shops that I had bought stuff from - they all had their own passwords & logins (arghh) then, they have "limited downloads" ...some of the downloads had even expired - what a waste of money. Seriously, I just gave up on those patterns, it's not worth the bother of chasing them but lesson learnt, I will only be buying patterns from a centralised location like Etsy, Ravelry & Craftsy from now on.

Geesh, you cannot imagine how loosing everything can deflate you yet set you free at the same time!  I feel as though I've been given a second chance. I've promised myself to make what I have before buying more. I've promised myself to learn and to keep learning.  ...we'll see how long I can keep this motivation going!

So back to crafting and I've also been dyeing some wool.

Firstly is this yellow colourway, which is still un-named -- any suggestions?

Also, this colourway which I love and I'll be popping into the shop soon. I've called it: Playground.

I also managed to finish my Doodler shawl. I've soaked it, blocked it and just waiting on the right time to be able to photograph it but here is a sneak peak of it blocking.

And via Instagram, I joined a couple of hexie swaps.  I've sent the majority off in the post and I'm slowly starting to receive some back. I don't know if it can be done but I'm going to experiment and see if I can join them using the sewing machine.  Some of the hexies that I've received are a different size (oops!), so I'll be experimenting on those ones first!

And now for an opinion....  one of the swaps I joined asked for fussy cut hexies and 'special' hexies.
Now, I've done the fussy cut ones and have been experimenting with the 'special' ones.  The bottom two are some of my 'experiments'... I'm ok with the patchwork one BUT what do you think of the zip hexie? Too much? Too weird? Or ok?? 
...please, I really need your opinion on the zippy one, I don't want my swap partner to look at it and say uck & throw it in the bin!