Starstruck!

March 13, 2016 Penni6 Comments

As you may have gathered by now, I am a huge fan of Lucy at Attic24.
Yesterday, I uploaded a pic of my current WIP blanket to Instagram.

This is a combination of Lucy’s Sunny colours and Raindrops stitch which I have changed to treble crochet (UK terms) rather than half treble crochet.

OMG – Lucy commented! Now you may think I am being daft but as an avid follower of Lucy’s blog I am over the moon she took the time to comment on my work.

I have not been successful putting colour combinations together myself, so I unashamedly admit all my blankets to date, apart from my african flower blanket, have been an Attic24 blanket. I explained in a previous post what happened when I added extra colours to my Cottage Ripple blanket…..

Anyway, I have decided it’s time to be brave. I want to put my own individuality into my work. I promised a friend I will make her a blanket this year – her favourite colours are purple and lime green!

So, I took the plunge and have come up with the following colour combination which I have called ‘Passion Flower’ – what do you think ?

I can’t take the credit for naming the colour combo though (one thing at a time!) I posted the colour combo to my Facebook page asking for name ideas. A friend suggested ‘Passion Flower’ and my Mum sent me the pic of a Passion Flower in her garden – job done!

Since my last post, I have finished my Sunny Log Cabin blanket.

As ‘it’s the law’ on crochet blogs, here is the mandatory ‘pile of blankets’ photo…

It took a few attempts to take the photo as Mr B wanted to get in on the action……

Progress on my ‘Sunny Raindrops’ blanket is coming along nicely.

Miss M gave me no choice really – it would be such a shame to disturb her…….

Happy hooking !

Commuter crochet…..

February 21, 2016 Penni6 Comments

I love hooking blankets through the chilly months and sometimes find myself snoozing under a snuggly WIP 🙂 Mr B and Miss M also enjoy evaluating the coziness of my projects.

However Miss M does get a little impatient with my progress at times…..

Having completed the Cottage Ripple blanket, the not so successful second ripple blanket and the gorgeous Cosy Stripe at the beginning of 2015, I started looking for ideas for my next blanket.

Requirements:
– a change from ripples and stripes
– random colours
– not granny squares
– a project I could take with me to work on during my daily commute on the train

Pinterest is a great resource for ideas and I came across the African Flower. I also liked the idea of joining hexagons rather than squares.

There are lots of African Flower patterns out there on the internet but as I haven’t mastered the art of reading a crochet diagram, I needed a tutorial with easy to follow pictures and found Heidi Bears African Flower tutorial.

I played around with the number of rounds and how I would join them together. I settled on a flower with one joining round.

This project was perfect for my daily commute on the train. Each morning small balls of yarn in various random colours were popped into a bag with my hook and scissors and I came home every evening with a handful of flowers.

The flowers were joined together in the evenings and at weekends using Heidi Bears join-as-you go method. I modified this method by joining every stitch rather than joining after each set of three trebles.

Mr B oversaw a lot of the joining together…..

Progress was very quick and it took less than a month to complete the blanket. The colour combinations were completely random as this depended on the colours popped into my project bag each morning. I sometimes had to close my eyes to pick the yarn balls to stop myself being drawn to the same colours which would have ruined the whole random colour scheme I wanted to achieve !

Here is the final result….