Hello and SORRY – it has been a few weeks since my last post. I was calling these ‘weekly’ updates but that just hasn’t been happening. My day job has been REALLY busy for a few weeks but should be calming down now, so hopefully I will get to spend my weekends here again.
I have still been busy with my crochet projects on the train each day. I have also been able to work on with my Hearts and Spots blanket in the evenings. Although I don’t want to get my laptop out after a day in the office – I don’t mind a bit of crochet to wind down before bed.
Here are the latest views of the blanket. I still have to tie in all the ends but it is all stitched together. The border would be finished if I hadn’t run out of yarn! The yarn order is in for just two more balls of Drops Paris to complete the project. The patterns for the squares are on my blog, heart square pattern here and basic square pattern here. I am not fully happy with the way they fit together so I will be tweaking them over the coming weeks. I plan to put a smaller version of the blanket together as a kit so watch this space on that.
This project is waaay too big for the train now so I have been working on other things in the mornings and evenings. I started work designing more blocks and produced a pentagon…. not terribly useful as they don’t tesselate or fit together easily. I might turn out a pattern for a ball (think football/soccer) at some point using these and a hexagon or two 🙂 I will put the hexagon pattern up on here in case anyone finds it helpful for a five sided project! I suppose you could just keep going round and make a pentagon shaped blanket.
My other project on the train has been a little bag. I am quite pleased with this so far. It looks a bit basic as it still needs handles, decoration. I think I might include a lining. Again I am thinking about putting this pattern together as a kit on Etsy but I will share the pattern for free on the blog as soon as I can get it written up.
I have been using a lighter weight yarn for these two projects, Drops Muskat. Another winner from Drops as far as I am concerned. This yarn again is incredible value and consistent quality. I have yet to find a knot! The yarn is 100% mercerized cotton with a lovely sheen and tight twist which means that it doesn’t split much if at all when being worked. Easier if you want to be looking up from the work a bit! I have been using a 4mm hook for this yarn which seems to work well. The finished work has great stitch definition so would really show off complicated stitches.
Finally, a team project has started in my house. It started with me worrying about the cost of yarn. I began wondering whether it would be possible to get hold of some yarn very cheaply by buying old knitwear and dismantling garments to recover the yarn. This is where my Mum came in and if I am honest has completely taken over! A trawl of local charity/thrift shops turned up a number of candidate garments. We got to work (carefully) with scissors, unpicking and balling and the results have been amazing. I will put up a separate post on the process and results as I could fill pages with what we found and learned. For this post, in summary, we have recovered a huge quantity of yarn so far for a tiny outlay. My Mum is now unstoppable in her search for woollies to dismantle and I have started my first project using this recovered yarn! I am trying to top up what we find with yarn from my stash but as it stands far more is going into my stash than is coming out!!
Here are some of the pics of the project using the recycled yarn. The inspiration for the project was the first yarn we recovered – a soft brown boucle yarn flecked with yellow and orange. I came up with a pattern for a block using a cluster stitch (another new one for me). I will share the patterns in a separate post.
My husband loves drawing and designing and was once an engineer before moving on to other things so he likes a bit of geometry and maths. I enlisted his help for this project as I was short on time. He came up with this layout below which I really like – I think I will be asking him for designs more often! Here is his sketch.
I have had a very exciting time with the blog this month. One of my posts on pricing of handmade work seemed to catch attention out there and drove far more page views than I have had previously. My income from ads ‘soared’ to £1.83 in one month 🙂 clearly still a long way to go to being financially secure!
That’s all from me for this post – I have promised a number of follow on posts and patterns so I had better get working! Please get in touch either by leaving a comment or joining my mailing list. I love hearing from you all.
Happy crocheting!
Annie 🙂
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