Stickytapeandstring

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merino wool

Knitted Blanket

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Now for a knitting project 🙂   I have been doing a lot of crochet lately and I miss having two needles on the go.    I grew up doing a lot of knitting and only recently started my crochet journey.    I bought this lovely super chunky yarn at a recent craft show.    This is 100% merino wool and beautifully soft.     I have three packs of 10 x 50g hanks which all need to be hand wound before I can start.    Time to enlist some help from the family!

I have decided to knit a blanket with this lovely yarn.   It needs to retain the softness of the yarn so the stitches must not be too tight.   The back needs to look respectable so that limits my options a bit.   Another challenge I have is that I have no idea how far the yarn will go.    I found a helpful calculator on Pinterest which I have put on my ‘Design’ board and based on that knitted up a square that I thought would use one ball.

For the blanket I decided to use circular needles and knit it in one go rather than have several squares to join.   The back of the blanket will be smoother and look better without joins.   To keep the stitch loose I decided to go up one size from the recommended needle size.   This puts me on massive 10mm needles 🙂

I picked the blue for the edges to frame the work with a darker edge.    I have estimated the use of the colours to try to use up all the yarn.   I can get hold of more of this but it comes in 10 hank packages which would make it quite expensive if I only need a little more!

The stitches I picked for the squares were ones that had a reverse side that looked good.   The only squares that don’t look as good on the reverse are the cable squares and I love cables sooooo much that I had to include some anyway 🙂

Here is how the project looks at the moment.    I will post again when I have finished and I will be writing up the pattern so I can list both the pattern and the blanket on my Etsy store.

I am not the fastest knitter by a long way but this knits up so quickly.     That is the beauty of knitting in a heavy gauge yarn!

That’s all for now.   I am going to review my stash to find inspiration for my next project 🙂

Happy Knitting!

Annie 🙂

 

More Stripes

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Hello, this week I worked on a second striped scarf.   This one has a lot of the blue colour I used in my flower hats.   The pattern is slightly different although on the same theme as the pink striped scarf I made last week.

The pattern of thin and thick stripes is really interesting and the scarf is fully reversible.   The two sides do look quite different and I love the effect that results from turning the work at each end.

The scarf would be a great project for anyone just beginning to crochet for the first time.    There are only three stitches to master and one of those is chain which is about as easy as it gets.   However, the first row after the chain is very fiddly and I ended up having to do mine twice when I made this second scarf because I managed to get two stitches into one chain loop!

One very satisfying aspect of this pattern is that there are no ends to finish off.   All the ends are ‘hidden’ in the fringing/tassles.   🙂

This has used up the last of the yarn I had left over from my flower hats!    I will be reviewing my stash for the next projects but in the mean time have been out buying more gorgeous yarns.    I will write a post on those later in the week once I have taken some photographs.

That’s all for now – have a go at one of these stash busting scarves – they grow really quickly and the finished item is really  lovely.   If you would like the pattern then it is available on my blog under the patterns section or if you find the ads annoying, visit my Etsy store where I will be listing it for a small charge.

Happy Crocheting!

Annie 🙂

Stripes scarf

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This project is made with the same yarns as my flower hats.    I had quite a bit of each colour left over but not enough to make any more hats in the same design.  I fancied a change anyway so decided to attempt a scarf.

I have collected a lot of images of scarves on my Pinterest boards.   The style I am working here is one of my favourites to wear.    It lends itself to using many colours and as such is perfect for a continuation of my stash busting hats project.  This yarn is a mix of cashmere and merino wool so is beautifully warm to wear.

I began by working a chain to the length of scarf I wanted to produce.    This seemed to go on for ever!    There are 330 stitches in one row of my scarf and the finished scarf measures   160 cm/64 inches long by 15 cm/6 inches.     I made up the stitch pattern and colour banding as I worked the piece but kept careful notes.     I will write up the pattern and put it up on my Etsy store.

This project did not work well on my commute as it grew quite quickly and used several balls of yarn at a time.   I have a separate project worked in parallel so that I could make use of my commuter time!

To finish off the scarf I considered adding more flowers but they didn’t stand out as well as I would like against the stripes so instead I went for fringing.    I have used up all my spare yarn of this type now and listed both the hats and this scarf on Etsy.  I hope you like them 🙂

Happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

Flower Hats

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These Flower Hats started out as a stash buster project.    I was looking through my stash and found I had a number of balls of lovely soft yarn.  The yarn is a mix of merino wool and cashmere in various colours.   However, there was not enough to make a blanket.  I had no more than two or three balls of any one colour.

I needed a project that would make the most of this beautiful yarn so I decided to have a go at making a hat.   They were very quick to make and are a lovely snug fit.   The hats looked a little plain so I added flowers to the headband.    The flowers were great to make my commute – I made strings of them without finishing off the ends.   Later I used the ends to attach them to the hats.

Flower Hats

These little hats have been very easy to work on the train.    They only need one ball of yarn and they are nice and compact even when finished!    I will share the pattern I created if anyone is interested.

Over the next couple of weeks, I am planning to complete a few more of these hats.   I will also make a scarf to match but there will only be enough yarn for one scarf so that will be a bit special.   Getting creative on my commute turns an hour of ‘dead’ time into an hour of special time.

I listen to audiobooks on Audible whist crocheting away and the journey whizzes by.    Sometimes when I am working over the weekend at home on my projects I listen to Audible because the books from my commute have become hard to ‘put down’!   Audible normally offer a free trial – you can download one book for free without commitment to see whether you like it or not.    I need to tell you that I am a member of the Amazon Affiliate programe.   This means that if you click on this link below or any other link in my blog I might receive a small income at no additional cost to you.

When I am finished I will list the Flower Hats and the scarf on my Etsy store.    I haven’t actually set up my Etsy store yet as each time I try I seem to be missing a bit of information or a photo.   In fact, I will put out a blog post on preparing to set up an Etsy store!    UPDATE – my Etsy store is now up and running but I am still waiting for my first sale!!  You can visit me here – Stickytapeandstring – Etsy shop.  I also plan to check out Amazon Handmade – has anyone used that yet?   Let me know how it goes 🙂

Happy Crocheting,

Annie 🙂