Wednesday WIP

I’m juggling quite a few projects at the moment, and have been kept so busy I’ve not had time to blog properly, which is a wee bit frustrating!  The biggest project is redecorating/revamping my sitting room, which is going to take about a month (I need to do it in stages or it will be utter chaos as this is a very small house), and I will blog about that once it’s properly finished.

One of the things about decorating is that you inevitably have to declutter as you go.  This is no bad thing, particularly when you’re as much of a hoarder as I am.  Amongst the many, many, many random bags of stuff I found a bag of knitted blanket squares.  It’s been so long since I made them that I can’t remember when I started that particular project, but I’d hazard a guess that it was at least four years ago.

That’s as far as I got with that particular blanket, and I abandoned it because it took so long for me to knit a single square – I’m very slow with regular knitting needles (although I’m very speedy with DPNs, strange but true), and although the cream squares are just plain garter stitch, the brown ones are patterned.

Yup, that’s a paw print!  So, what to do with this bag of squares?  I could have frogged them all, but I already have too much spare yarn in the house, so I decided it would be quicker to just knit one more square (mercifully it was a cream one) and then sew the whole lot together…

It’s a teeny tiny blanket, no use to a human, but I’m going to put it away safely and hopefully one day it will be a blanket for a pup of my very own!

My hexipuffs have been shelved temporarily as I’ve been completely distracted by a brand new project.  I’ll elaborate on this next week, but in the meantime here’s a sneak peek at the tools and materials that I’m using…

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A colourful adventure ends

I started this blanket back in November, click here to read about the start, and almost met my goal of finishing it before the end of 2011.  I did finish the body of the blanket on 31st December, but decided to add a little edge to the sides on 1st January.

It’s turned out quite small, which is only to be expected as I refused to buy any more yarn to make it bigger!  The final measurements are 110cm x 91cm, just big enough to use as a lap blanket.  I think I’ll take it down to my studio as it’ll be handy for keeping my legs warm when I’m working, and also when I’m sitting out in the garden with a cuppa.

I’ve enjoyed this blanket, and I really like the pattern.  I think I’d like to make another one at some point, using the same alternating bobbles and stripes, but with a more limited colour scheme.  The yarn was also really nice to work with, not as “splitty” as I’d feared (being a cotton), and the drape of the finished blanket is perfect.

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Tying up loose ends

As the end of the year is rapidly approaching I thought I’d better see if I’ve got any projects on the go which I could try and finish before 2012 starts.  Mercifully I only seem to have the one at the moment: the colourful adventure blanket (yeah, I stil need to think of a proper name for it).

That’s what it looks like at the moment, and I’m rapidly running out of yarn so with a bit of luck it’ll be finished by 31st December.  I’ll post photos when it’s done

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Posting from afar

Well, from Blackburn really as I’m away for the weekend.  In truth I’m actually publishing this post in my own absence (got to love the scheduling feature on WordPress), and it’s just a little snapshot of the colourful blanket (which has yet to be named – any suggestions?).

I’ve managed to keep up the progress over the last couple of days, and am sad that I’ll have to take a break from it this weekend (it doesn’t seem very practical to go away with a bag full of yarn!).

In other news, if you haven’t yet signed up for this month’s Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt then why not give it a go?  It would be lovely if we can get a few new faces participating, so if you know anyone who would be interested then please give them a shove!  I’ll be posting the list of participants (and links to their blogs) on 30th November.

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A colourful adventure – part 2

I told you I was determined to post more regularly, and here we are – every day this week so far.  Clearly I won’t be able to keep this up, but for now I’m feeling smug even though it’s only Thursday!

I’ve been at work the past two days (my gardening work, not studio work) and as a result haven’t had much time for anything else.  I have managed to do a little more of my latest crochet project though.

It’s wonderfully colourful, isn’t it?  It’s still very much in the early stages but so far it makes me think of circuses and the bright posters they have.  I’m especially pleased with the bobbles as I had to work that out by myself.  I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to do some more this evening as I find it’s easier for me to work through projects quickly (before I get bored!).  I’ll post another update on this over the weekend.

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A colourful adventure begins

We all make impulse purchases, and I made one last December.  I blame Lucy over at Attic24, who always make such beautifully colourful things.  She mentioned on her blog that First 4 Yarns were selling packs of wool in her colours, and as I was having a pretty miserable time back then I gave in and bought one.

As impulse buys go, it wasn’t a very quick one.  I purchased the yarn at the beginning of December, and didn’t receive it until the end of January… and by then I’d lost interest in it so it got stashed away.  Out of sight and out of mind, sort of.  I’ve never forgotten I have it, but haven’t been able to think of any project that it would be suitable for.

Last week I was catching up with various blogs, including Attic24, and once again Lucy was responsible for inspiring me.  She mentioned a blanket she’d seen in a magazine (click here to view her post), and then posted a link to a blog called Little Woollies where the author is making a very similar blanket to the one Lucy was admiring.

That was it.  That was the project that the stashed yarn was destined for, and yesterday I made a start on it.

It doesn’t look very promising in that photograph (my mother looked down her nose at it…), but I’m a bit further on now and it’s starting to come together already.  I’m choosing my colours very randomly (on a ‘ooh, I like that!’ basis), and also selecting the stitch type for each row on a similarly random basis.  I think it’s going to be extremely haphazard, but I’m hoping that it will work as a whole…

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Going for the treble

Not a footballing reference (given the slow start my team had this season), but another crocheted blanket.

I was given a bag of yarn a couple of months ago by one of my mother’s friends, which was brilliant but my goodness the bag took up a lot of space.  I’m serious, the ball of oatmeal-coloured yarn was the size of a football!  The bag also contained half a dozen balls of purple and grey yarn too, thankfully of a more normal size, and the whole lot was taking up space that I simply don’t have.

What’s a girl to do?  Look for a pattern that a) eats yarn, and b) is quick to work up.  A quick browse on Ravelry solved the problem and I settled on this pattern (you’ll need to register to view it, but registration is free).

The oatmeal-coloured yarn was a chunky one, but the grey and purple were regular thickness so I worked with double strands to match up with the chunky.  It was a remarkably quick project, taking only a week from start to finish.  The result is a good sized throw which measures 155cm x 105cm, just right for snuggling on the sofa.  Ironically, considering the size of the ball, I ran out of the oatmeal yarn first so ended up altering the pattern to put a thick border on each side (one purple, and one grey) which actually works very well.  I’m really taken with this pattern as it introduced me to a new stitch, which results in a cable-knit type effect.  I’ll definitely be incorporating that into my next crochet project.

So, mission accomplished.  I still have a bit of the purple and grey yarns left, but the giant bag of yarn is effectively gone (the leftovers fit nicely into my regular crochet crate) and we have more space.  Plus another blanket for winter snuggling.  I’d call that a good result!

Apologies for the somewhat dull looking photos.  I forgot that at this time of year there’s bugger all natural light after about 3pm!

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Blanketed in blooms

About this time last month I was seized by the urge to make another blanket.  Let’s ignore the fact that I haven’t yet finished my ripple blanket.  I didn’t want to buy any more yarn (and, frankly, can’t afford to do that at the moment) so I looked around for ideas for a blanket that would enable me to use up all the small scraps of yarn I’ve got left.

I loved the Summer Garden Granny Square blanket that Lucy over at Attic24 made, but I wanted something a little less busy.  So I started off by making lots of the little granny squares.

I made 180 of them, and about a third of the way through I realised I wasn’t going to have enough leftover yarn… so I dug out an old blanket (picked up at a boot sale for a pittance many, many years ago) and frogged it so I could use the wool from that.

This was a good decision as the blanket had been used for absolutely nothing for the past few years (other than being sat on – I’ve never used it as an actual blanket), and I got lots of wool out of it.

Once I’d made my little granny squares (click here to see Lucy’s tutorial) I joined them to make 20 larger squares and then edged them with two rounds of white.

But when I sat back and looked at them they weren’t quite right, so I added another round of white.

Much better.  Then came the joining of all 20 squares, and I’m now in the process of edging the whole lot in white.

I’ve done one round so far and intend to add another two which should make it look lovely and balanced.  That will have to wait for a little while though as I’ve run out of white yarn again.  I’ve enjoyed working on this little project, and it’s come together so quickly (a month!) that I might make another of these next year when I’ve accumulated more leftovers

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A new blanket, and a new page!

I’ll start with the blanket!  Last year I fell in love with this pattern, but lacked the funds to buy the yarn for it.  Midway through January this year a friend (the lovely Sally from Sow & Sew) recommended I try Kemps for bargaintastic yarn, and I succumbed to temptation.  In my defence the yarn I bought was on sale (I ended up choosing the Stylecraft Kon-Tiki, a 50% cotton 50% acrylic blend).

So, it’s taken me six weeks but the new blanket is finally finished.  It was good fun to make, the octagons and squares were easy, but my goodness the sewing together was so dull!  Seriously, it felt as though it would never end.  I did wonder if I should have tried to join-on-the-go as I went, but came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t look as neat if I did that, so I was stuck with the sewing at the end.

Would you like to see it?  Of course you would!

It’s really rather lovely, and I am very pleased that I finally got to make it.  The colours are more subtle than the other blankets I’ve made, but I like that.  I think this might end up being the new blanket for my bedroom

Finished size of the blanket is approximately 130cm x 85cm.

Onto the second part of this post – a new page!  Click here, or just click the new page link at the top of the screen for ‘Surprise the Artist’

 

 

For my reference, because I’m prone to losing small bits of paper, care instructions for this yarn:

Stylecraft Kon-Tiki DK. 50% cotton, 50% acrylic.  Machine washable 30 degrees.  May be dry cleaned.  Cool tumble dry.  Do not iron.

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More ripples, and pretty hooks…

Another wee crochet catch up.  I treated myself to a set of new hooks – they range from 2.5mm up to 10mm in size, and they’re so pretty and colourful!

I’ve already used the largest (10mm) hook to make a start on a new throw for my bedroom:

Alas, I have now run out of yarn for that so it will have to go on the back burner for a while until I can afford to order some more.

To soothe my frustration at having to pause mid-throw I tried making myself a hat.  Just something simple, but it worked beautifully and I wore it all day today while out at my studio and then working in the garden:

I think that’s quite enough crochet for now.  Tomorrow I’ll be back with some notebook updates.

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