Falling leaves

One of my newest projects is this fun mystery crochet-a-long

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I’ve still got a knitted dress and a crochet blanket to finish, so starting two new projects might not have been the best idea. But they both sounded like a lot of fun. Here I’ll talk about the first: a mystery crochet-a-long.

I only recently completed my first-ever ‘a-long’, a knitted shawl. I liked the finished piece and enjoyed the mystery element, so when the designer, Rohn Strong, mentioned a mystery crochet-a-long (MCAL) on his Instagram account I decided to sign up for it. All I knew about it at that stage was that it would be an afghan.

These were meant to be leaves; they look more like elf slippers, or maybe ears

The pattern calls for yarn in five different colours. It’s called Fall Garden, so I chose a selection of autumnal shade. The suggested yarn is Deborah Norville Everyday Soft, but I couldn’t find that in the UK. Instead I’ve used Stylecraft Special Aran, which seems to be very similar.

I’ve completed the first four clues and the fifth and final one arrived in my inbox late yesterday (27 October 2015). I had some issues with the first clue. I was supposed to be crocheting leaves but what I ended up with looked more like elf slippers. I did five of them before I thought to check on Ravelry. And yes, I had got it wrong. Thank the knitting gods for Ravelry and for people uploading their photos! A lesson on why it’s so important to read the instructions properly.

Leaves, as they're meant to look!

I undid the five elven slippers and made some leaves instead and from then on I’ve been going great guns. Clue 2 was a flower. Clue 3 was five more of the flowers in a different colour and clue 4 was the same. I like these easy clues! The final clue is how to assemble the afghan.

I’ve enjoyed this MCAL. I’ve learnt some new techniques and I think both the flower and leaf motifs look lovely. It’ll be interesting to see how it all hangs together.

My first flower. There are another 10, in two different colours.

Rainbow blanket

Despite having several projects ongoing, I decided to start a new crochet blanket. It is winter after all, and you can never have too many blankets

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Given that I’ve already got three projects on the go, it probably wasn’t the best idea to start another one. But I bought some Ice acrylic yarn via a Facebook Group, wool for sale, and felt inspired to crochet a blanket. There are eight balls of wool, each a different colour and varigated, so the idea was to make a rainbow blanket.

Magic Light from Ice Yarns in rainbow colours.

I knew I wanted to create the blanket using crochet squares, using two or three different styles. The main square would be very plain to make the most of the varigated colours; the other squares would be lacy and there would be two per row. So I headed over to Ravelry and started searching. I quickly found three free patterns that exactly fitted what I wanted.

A couple of weekends ago The Chap and I went to Edinburgh for a long weekend, so I packed the patterns, a ball of yarn and my trusty crochet hook. First things first, I needed a sample of each square to see if they were the same size, or at least could be made to be the same size. And that’s when things started to go wrong.

Locutus.

I started on the first square, Veolias Mormorsruta. It soon became clear that the pattern was impossible to follow. It’s translated into English from Swedish, but I don’t think the translation is the problem. The pattern reads much like a technical challenge from Great British Bake-off: I’ve got the materials needed and some basic instructions, but half of it seems to be missing. I couldn’t work out what to do by studying the photo, and even checking Ravelry didn’t turn up any errata.

The pattern reads much like a technical challenge from Great British Bake-off: I’ve got the materials needed and some basic instructions, but half of it seems to be missing

So I had to move on to the next square, Locutus. This was much easier – I couldn't follow a couple of the instructions, but happilty I could work out what I was supposed to do by looking at the photo. The final square was a simple, solid granny square. So having made a couple of samples of Locutus, all I had to do was work out how many rounds were required to make the solid square the same size. Turns out it was eight rounds of treble crochet with a final round of double. Simple.

Solid granny square.

One ball of the Ice yarn will produce two Locutus squares and five solid ones. This should give me a blanket that’s about 130cm wide. With eight balls of wool, each in a different colour, it should be about 150cm long. So a nice size and when it’s done it’ll be perfect for wrapping around me when it’s cold.

The joy of other people’s patterns

For the first time in a long time I’m crocheting something designed by someone else, and you know what? I’m enjoying myself

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It’s been a while since I started something not of my own design. When I saw the pattern for this crochet picnic blanket, I just had to make it. It’s gorgeous. It’s also massive and it’s going to take ages to complete it, but that’s OK.

The pattern is a free one from Rowan that I received in the Love Knitting eNewsletter. It can be downloaded here. Obviously Rowan want you to use the company’s own yarn to make the blanket, the one recommended is Handknit Cotton. It would cost more than £200 to make the piece in that yarn. So I instead I turned to old favourite Rico Design. This German company produces some lovely yarns at quality that rivals Rowan and Debbie Bliss but at around half the price. Buying at Wool Warehouse, the amount of Rico Essentials Cotton needed came in at just over £100 – less than half the cost of the Handknit Cotton.

I love this stitch pattern and the colour combination, but
it's going to take a while to get the blanket to 1.5m long.
Photo by Idoru Knits.

The gauge is slightly different, with the Rico knitting up to 22 stitches and 28 rows on 4mm needles and the Rowan 19/28. But my tension is quite loose with crochet, so this wasn’t a problem with this pattern. Anyone with a tighter tension should just use a bigger crochet hook. If this were a knitting pattern, I’d go up to 4.5mm needle.

The other great thing about the Rico is that there were 52 colours to choose from, meaning I could match the Rowan colours as closely as possible. It’s quite unusual for me to stick to the exact colours in a pattern, as I generally want to put my own stamp on anything I make. But in this project the colours were so lovely I wanted to replicate them.

Crocheting this blanket is just fun, pure and simple

The pattern calls for nine different colours, but I think it would also be quite arresting in, for example, three very contrasting colours, or you could even go monochrome. With so many colours to choose from, it would also be possible to make the blanket in, say, all pinks, or blues, or greens.

I’m really enjoying this pattern. It’s nice to just be able to sit down and crochet, without having to worry about measuring and maths, without keeping notes on everything, without experimenting and getting it wrong, having to go back to the beginning, rewrite my notes, and so on and so on. Crocheting this blanket is just fun, pure and simple.

I like designing, but I’m not really doing anything with my designs. I’ve written up hardly any of my patterns, and I’m not entirely sure about sizing. I can make something that’ll fit me just fine, but I don’t know how that translates to a small, medium or large to fit a range of bodies.

I’ve got a couple of self-designed items to finish off – a dress and a sweater – and I think after I’ve completed them I shall work on other people’s patterns, at least for a while. I’ve got tons sitting on my computer waiting for me; in fact I’ve got some absolutely stunning lace shawl patterns and some gorgeous lace-weight yarns that are just made for each other.

Designing a cover for my latest gadget

How it will look. Almost.

In January I treated myself to an Asus Transformer Prime - we all deserve a present in the middle of winter, right? And, well, I love it. It’s just so useful, so easy to carry around and it comes with a keyboard so I can get lots of writing done will away from my laptop, which is pretty much all weekend, every weekend these days. I can take photos, read books, read the blogs I’m following, keep up with Twitter and Facebook and even play the occasional game. As you could probably guess I’m something of a fan.

But, of course, this makes it imperative that my shiny new purchase remains shiny and unscratched, which means only one thing - the chance to design a cover. I decided to go for crochet rather than knitting this time, as I’ve been rather neglecting the former craft. Also, fabric made from double crochet is generally tighter, and therefore more protective, than knitted material.

For the yarn I wanted something hardwearing and not too expensive as the cover is going to spend most of its time in or being pulled from bags, getting dirty and and scrunched up in the process. I also wanted something chunky so it would make up nice and quickly. I’ve got loads of Sirdar Click in my stash, and this acrylic/wool mix was ideal.

In progress. Here you can see the ribbed effect of
crocheting only through the back loop.

Of course I didn’t want a plain cover, so I chose two colours I thought would match nicely - cream and lilac - and got striping. Now a lot of knitters and crocheters avoid stripes because of all the ends that’ll need sewing in. But there’s a trick to that: don’t cut the yarn. Instead run it along the edge of the fabric, simply bringing the colour into use at the right time. Then you just hide the strands in the joining. It’s the same technique as in fair isle or intarsia.

Striping wasn’t the only interest though. By only inserting the hook through the back loop of each double crochet I created a ribbed fabric that’s lovely to look at and feel and has lots of stretch. That stretchiness means the fabric isn’t really suitable for lining, but using double crochet and a chunky yarn should ensure that the stitches stay tight and thick enough to provide all the protection Optimus needs (it’s a Transformer Prime; of course I called it Optimus).

A close up of the striped ribbing.

Once the cover was slightly bigger than the tablet, I tied off, folded the piece in half and loosely slip stitched all the way around - including the folded edge so it would match the other side, but not the top.

I’m now in the process of creating an envelope-style flap with a buttonhole to secure it and slip stitched around the edges, again to make it match the rest and to hide the stranded bits of yarn. The finished piece should look a bit like a document folder.

Of course I’m thinking of variations. Something similar, but in a brown yarn, crocheting through both loops, a square flap rather than shaped and buckles instead of a button would create a satchel-style cover that could then be lined.

This cover is for a 10” Asus Transformer tablet, but the pattern could easily be adapted for any tablet or eReader - simply adjust the number of chain stitches at the beginning.

You can just see the flap taking shape here.

Crochet project wanted

I’ve been thinking recently that I want to start a new crochet project, something big that I can really get my teeth into. The only crochet I’ve done for a while were the various iPhone covers I designed, but these were just, well, iPhone sized. I want something big. Not just big, though, complicated and lacy too. And made in crochet thread on a tiny hook, preferably in one piece rather than joined motifs. Masochistic much?

Last week I tweeted to this effect, and in a nice example of helpful the crafting community it, one of my followers retweeted me to one of her followers who suggested I search on Ravelry. OK, I probably should have thought of that myself, but I didn’t. Anyway, Ravelry has a great search function. There are more than 300,000 patterns on the site, and you can add all kinds of criteria to narrow your search- craft, if it’s free, if it has a photo, yarn weight and yardage used, among other options.

I selected the relevant filters and a selection of choices appeared. I now have seven new projects queued - all lovely big shawls, tablecloths or bedspreads. I just have to decide which one to tackle first.

This vintage shawl pattern is now in my queue;
I think it would look good in the blue.