Stickytapeandstring

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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 🙂

 

Granny Square blankets

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A short post to share a couple of my projects from last year.

When I first started crocheting as a little girl I used to make granny square blankets with all my scrap yarn.    I used to knit a lot so I had quite a bit of scrap yarn left over!   I loved making the blankets and quickly progressed to buying odd balls of remnant yarn from our local wool shop with my pocket money!

I came back to crochet last year and again started with granny square blankets.    I made a huge blanket for our living room first.    My children had just had their rooms decorated and both asked for a blanket for their beds.    You can see the results below.    These blankets are very basic in terms of the stitches used.    They grow really really quickly and you can work them in front of the TV once you get into the rhythm!

This is the blanket my son wanted….

The blankets are very warm.   I think the ‘holes’ actually help the blankets hold the warmth – if that makes any sense.   They do munch an awful lot of yarn so really are excellent for using up scraps but if you are buying yarn to make them you should beware of the overall cost and choose a yarn to suit your budget!   As a guide these blankets are made out of Aran weight yarn and each weighs 2.7kg which would mean around 54 x 50g balls.   However, the blankets I made here are enormous, 2.5 metres square 🙂

This is my daughter’s blanket….

When I finally managed to convince them that the blankets were big enough I had to put an edge on them.    My son didn’t want anything ‘too fancy’ so his was just a couple of coloured bands.  My daughter went for a small scalloped edge.   The edge on my daughters took some time to do but again I think that was because of the sheer size!!

That’s all for now.   Only to let you know that I plan to make some smaller versions of these to sell in my Etsy shop as they make lovely cot blankets and I find them very relaxing to make.

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 🙂