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Birthday

27 May 2018

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Hello 🙂

Welcome to my second update.   I hope you have had a happy, productive week?   I have been busy finishing the little bags I started last week but Sunday did not start well.    I left my crochet in a bag in our living room over night, and this is what I found the following morning….

and this is the likely culprit!    We have three dogs, a mum and two pups.   The pups are just over a year old and still love to chew things!   The puppy in this pic is called Poppy and she is the worst for chewing things.   So far she has demolished various bags and shoes, including some expensive boots and the only pair of pricey sunglasses I have ever bought!    Our fault for leaving things in her reach I suppose.

Luckily for me my Mum loves to untangle yarn so I gave the tangled mess to her and now have a nice tidy ball again.     I finished the bags and basic bag pattern and put a blog post out about that.   bag pattern post.

I also made a few discs and hearts in the process – the discs were the bottom of the bags but I like the look of them on their own.   I might work them into a project of some kind but haven’t quite figured out what yet.    The hearts started out as motifs for the bags, from a basic pattern I found online.  I wasn’t very happy with the pattern so I adapted that to make a few medium and larger ones.  The larger ones are a bit more stable, I am very pleased with the pattern I created.

I am going to experiment with a heavier weight of yarn next.    I think these would make lovely table decorations for a wedding, baby shower or birthday.   I will write up the heart pattern so I can share it with you in a future post.

I made some in brighter colours too in Drops Paris yarn that I am worked sample squares in for a blanket.    I might try to work these hearts into the blanket design!

The other project I have been working on since I spoke to you last, is some bunting for a family birthday.    I put up a separate post on this as I managed to complete the work.   The bunting looks lovely and will be able to be reused unlike the tacky plastic stuff I normally buy.    I have been considering a design for crochet balloons but I am not sure I have that sorted yet 🙂   My post on the bunting includes the basic flag pattern and explains how I joined them into a garland.    You can read that post here  Bunting Pattern post

Last week I promised an update on my blog goals.    I put quite a bit of thought into this but I haven’t managed to create the bullet journal pages yet.  I am trying to keep it simple as I do find that keeping a bullet journal takes a lot of time.    The time I spend is lovely relaxing mindful time but I am not sure I have enough time available to devote so much of it to keeping a track of progress.   I will try to get these trackers done for next week’s update.   I do worry that I would make more progress if I didn’t spend so long tracking it 🙂

Status today – I have 544 Pinterest followers so I put on 22 this week.   Nothing exciting has happened with AdSense so I am still on 16p 🙂   I am getting a few page views, around 80 per week on average but no clicks.     I need to do some research on how to improve that if I want to achieve my goal of being able to spend more time on my crafting and blogging.   Maybe the adverts are not relevant enough.

I haven’t read up on mailing lists yet but mean to do that this weekend so watch this space on that one.   I haven’t listed anything new on Etsy either – I plan to write up the more complicated bag instructions along with some edged bunting and options for decoration then I will list both patterns.    I could list the bunting for sale but I want to use it at home – I will have to make some more!!

Finally, I was soooo thrilled to get a response to my first weekly update so this week I am planning to do a bit more research on my fellow crochet bloggers and leave a few comments on their posts, to see if I can make new connections and support people who are working on similar projects.   That’s all for now – more next week!

Happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

 

Birthday bunting – free pattern

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I would like to share with you a free pattern for my birthday bunting.   We have a happy day coming up in our household.    Every year I buy trashy plastic decorations and would like to stop! I have seen lots of news articles about the impact of plastic on the environment. This made me wonder whether I could make some bunting that we could re-use and this is the result.    I am quite pleased with it 🙂

Firstly I made the basic flags.   Working in double knitting weight yarn. I used yarn from my stash. If you are buying new, I do recommend the Special DK by Stylecraft. This yarn is great value and comes in a wide range of colours. I will leave a search link below.   If you click on the link it will take you to the current offers Amazon have for this yarn. Please note any links in my posts may give me a small income at no additional cost to readers. You could make these even more sustainably by using recycled yarn. Yarn recycling is a fun hobby of mine and you can read about it, including methods and tips here.

Birthday bunting – free pattern starts here!

UK/(US) instructions – Basic flag pattern work as follows – using a 4mm hook and DK yarn

Chain 39 (note this is a chain of 37 with two for the turn)

Work one row in DC (US terms SC) starting with the third chain from the hook

Turn, chain two. Work one row in DC (US terms SC) starting in the top of the second DC on the row below.

Turn, chain three. Work one row in TR (US terms DC) starting in the top of the second DC on the row below.

Repeat – so that you are doing two rows of DC (US terms SC), followed by a row of TR (US terms DC). At the start of each row, reduce one stitch by missing the first stitch of the row and working into the second.

As you repeat this pattern you will find each time you work a row of TR (US terms SC) you will have 3 stitches fewer than you had on the last row of that type.   Eventually you will get to a row of trebles where you only have 2 stitches to work and at that point you can finish off the work.

Making up the Bunting

To make the top of the bunting I started with a chain of six and formed a loop.   I then worked 30 chain before working 37 DC (US terms SC) across the top of the first flag using DC (US terms SC).   Put in 10 chain between each flag taking care not to allow the chain to twist.   Carry on until you have included all the flags you need. At the end work 30 chain then six more chain. Slip stitch into the first of these last six to make a loop.

Finally, work 12 DC (US terms SC) into the loop formed by the six chain and then work DC (US terms SC) all along the bunting to the end where you need to work 12 DC (US terms SC) into the final loop and slip stitch to finish off.

If you wanted to make smaller bunting then simply start with a smaller number of stitches.

Decoration is optional depending on the occasion.   As this is for a birthday I wanted to include the lettering.    Initially I worked up the letters in free form crochet but I wasn’t very happy with the result so I used felt instead.   This also made it a bit quicker to make.   I edged the felt letters with blanket stitch in the same colour way as a contrast.    Here is a close up of the ‘Happy’ 🙂

And on that note I will bring the post to a close – please let me know how you like the bunting.   I will be putting it up on my Etsy page which you can see here. Happy crocheting!

April 2020 update – I am reusing this pattern to make rainbow bunting to show support for the medical profession and all carers as the world fights Covid-19. Pattern to follow.

Annie 🙂