New crochet projects - Lacy Feather and Fan Wrap and another Windowpane Cowl and lovely new Yarn!!!

Welcome back!


As promised, I want to show you more about the recent new crochet projects that I started during the last two weeks, as mentioned in my last post.


The Lacy Feather and Fan Wrap


This is one of those amazing patterns that I had long favourited in my ravelry account, but at the time I was not ready to try it out!

Lacy Feather and Fan Wrap on Ravelry
This pattern is available as a free download.

If you check out the various projects from this pattern you will be amazed just how versatile and beautiful it is!

The basic pattern is based on 76 stitches which will have 3 shell and 4 feather sections. Of course you can vary the amount of stitches to a different width (multiples of 19 stitches).

Here is a first glimpse of my own work in progress! Isn't it pretty?

Lacy Feather and Fan Wrap

The story behind this project

Ok, back to the beginning. It began with an email that informed me about a brand new yarn by Louisa Harding, called Pittura. It is inspired by great painters. I fell in love with the shade Kahlo!

So I looked it up where I could get this online (after phoning my local wool shop which did not yet stock it). And I found a new online shop called https://www.tangled-yarn.co.uk/ where I decided to order from.

Whilst browsing their fabulous yarns, I came across a brand called http://www.walkcollection.com/en/ . Cathrin dyes her yarn in small batches by hand in Germany. The colour combinations are gorgeous. Her batches sell out fast!

So, suddenly I decided to order a skein of delicate Merino from the Walk Collection, in the shade called Salina. It has got a dark hazelnut brown, lighter brown, Rust, Lichen. Mushroom, Aqua Blue, bright Turquoise in it.  All these colours remind me of my recent walk in the woods to see the Bison!

When my package arrived, I was thrilled with the new yarn!!!

Louisa Harding Pittura (Kahlo) and Walk Collection (Salina)

Here is Salina, in a skein, then unwound and after winding it into a nice squishy yarn cake!!! It is Heavy Lace - 600m to a 100g. The colours are really difficult to show on a computer!

I decided to make a swatch to see how the pattern would look like and how it was put together. I had wanted to try a chevron, zigzag or ripple pattern for a while. What I like about this pattern is that the number of stitches remains constant in each row!

After that little swatch I was ready to get started!!!

My lacy Shawl together with my new spring flowers

I took the above two photos on the balcony to get better light. I love the lace effect against the light!

This time I am using my Addi hook 4mm, and I am crocheting so very loosely. This shawl will need some serious blocking afterwards. I have just done some maths and realised that I need to get a second skein!

So, you can see from this story, whilst I set out to find out about an advertised yarn, I actually ended up (also) with an entirely different yarn and entire new project!


The Windowpane Cowl


As you might remember, I recently made the first Windowpane cowl. You can read the post here! It also tells you more where to find this free pattern.

I liked this pattern so much that I decided to start another version, this time with a different yarn. I found some Drops Alpaca in a Teal colour in my existing stash. Oh, this wool is so soft with a kind of fuzzy halo. Some of the fibres actually looked green amongst the blue.

Below you can see the swatch I made from cotton yarn and then the new swatch from Pure Alpaca Yarn above it. The cotton swatch looks much crisper!

You can see I am slowly making progress. I love holding it in my hands, it feels incredibly soft!

As for the Louisa Harding Pittura yarn, I have already found a new project idea in that new Simply Haekeln Bookazine that I bought in Germany! I am itching to get started, but I better continue with these two projects, plus the green Spring Airy cotton Top, first blogged here.

Thanks for your support, as always! I look forward to reading your comments!
And thanks for following my blog, and a welcome to my latest followers, feel free to join in!

Finally, some more crochet news! Sources of inspiration and a walk in Boom

Hello again,


You would be forgiven for thinking I have been doing more knitting than crochet lately. In fact, that is not the case. It is just, that my making things has been racing ahead of my blogging! I tend to get caught up in thinking, just another row, just finish this part, and then I notice I haven't taken enough photos, let alone written about it!

I actually started two more crochet projects and one knitting one (the Moebius cowl which I just blogged about) in the last two weeks!!!!

As always, I soak up new ideas and patterns as part of my daily diet! To me they are as important as vitamins!

One large source is of course, pinterest. You can find me there: https://www.pinterest.com/myfunkycrochet/

For those of you who have not used it before, it is a never ending source of images and ideas!
I follow countless other people and boards and so I get a feed with new images. I save some of them to my own boards which in turn might inspire other people who follow me or my boards.

I tend to follow through a lot of pins to their original source because often you might find additional information as to how you can get the pattern (often free!) and then I download the PDF files.

Here is a handy tip if you want to download a pattern or tutorial from a website: copy the URL into the box on printfriendly.com which will then generate the option to download it as a PDF file! So simple! (This has the advantage that you only download the important bits and not the sidebar and/or advertising of the source site/blog.

Often a pin links to the original pattern on ravelry. This is another great place to dive into ideas and patterns. I have mentioned about it before!

What is your source of crochet (and knitting) inspiration?

Here you can see my recent haul when I went to visit Germany :

Two crochet books: Pixel Haekeln and Granny Squares,
one knitting book: Cardigans stricken,
One crochet bookazine (Simply Haekeln) , 1 filet crochet mini magazine (filethaekeln) and 1 general craft magazine (Selbst gemacht)


I will try to tell you more about interesting things in them once I have 'digested' them a bit more.  I can tell you that the bookazine from Simply Haekeln (Haekelmode) is already a great favourite, there are things I definitely want to make!!! I just need more time....

Two of the magazines also included free crochet hooks, yippee!



A Sunday walk in Boom

I leave you below with some nice spring photos I took last Sunday, we went to Boom (which is a small town near us, where we went for a little walk around the park there! It was such a beautiful day!

Are you enjoying the nice spring weather?

Quick knits - Moebius Cowl Scarf and here is my pattern for it

Hello dear Blog friends,


Today I finished another project which I only started a few days ago. This is really a quick project and an easy one as well!

You might recall this earlier post when I had previously made such a twisted cowl, and in fact I followed my own previous pattern again!



This is my funkycrochet pattern for it: Quick Knit Moebius Cowl

This works best for yarn/wool that has got some flexibility and drape.

Cast on 40 stitches, then knit every row. This means that you will get a rib pattern. Knit very loosely so that the finished scarf or cowl will be nice and stretchy. Aim for around 70 cm when making a single cowl, or about 140-150cm when making a cowl that will fit double around the neck.

(Cotton will shrink, so err slightly on the cautious side when calculating the length!)

Remember to cast off in a loose manner as well so that the shape will remain rectangular throughout.
When making a Moebius Cowl, remember to sew the ends together in a (once) twisted way.

Notes: it often helps to make a proof square so you know how many stitches there are to each 10cm. Check the yarn label for guidance, and depending on your own tension, adjust the number of stitches.

The secret here is to use a larger needle size than suggested. When joining new yarn, do so at the beginning of a new row, it is less obvious.

This pattern is suitable for beginners.


Crochet alternative pattern:

For those of you who want to make a similar cowl in crochet, you could start by chaining as many stitches as you need to reach the required width, then start working a row of (UK) trebles, followed by a row of (UK) double crochet into the back loops, then repeat *row of trebles, row of double crochet* until required length.

Alternatively, you could also work entirely with trebles, however, remember to work every row into the back loops to get a similar effect to the knitted scarf/cowl.



Some notes:

I used the discontinued yarn Rico Design Fashion Tasai, an Aran weight yarn with 135m to 50 g. Instead of the usual 5mm needles I used 7mm. It is a wool/acrylic mix which is easy to care for.

I needed a total of 3 x 50g.

The finished size of the scarf (before sewing into a cowl): 30 cm x 150 cm long.

Here you can see the colours which range from different shades of blue, brown, rust, gold to lilac and purple. The colour changes of each ball of yarn are not identical!

This was the scarf as soon as it was off the knitting needles!

Laid out in a straight line - 150cm long

I took these pictures outside just now, hoping that the daylight might show off the colours better (they look pretty realistic above).

Here the colours look different again!

What do you think? Do you like cowls or do you prefer scarves instead?

Feel free to leave me your comments below!

Hello Spring! Travels through Germany, Visit to a Bison Wildlife Park

Welcome back to another new week, dear blog friends!


I hope you enjoyed the weekend, finally we had some Spring sunshine!!!

First of all, thank you so much for all your lovely blog comments, they are much appreciated and I always love reading them. Your encouragement and enthusiasm helps to drive me on to new things!

Also, a warm welcome to my newest followers! Make yourselves at home and feel free to join in! I look forward to hear from you, don't be shy!

You might have seen from some of my recent replies to your comments that I have been away last weekend. We went on a trip to the east part of Germany - to a place called Altenburg. We go there every year as there is a music festival which we visit.

On our drive home, we passed a town called Schwalmstadt-Treysa where we had a delicious lunch.
This is a picture of the town hall, you can see that the sun wasn't shining that warmly but nevertheless people enjoyed sitting outside and having ice creams!

If you are interested, you can find more info about Schwalmstadt here!
It seemed a nice town geared towards tourists and visitors with restaurants and many shops.


Wisent-Wildnis am Rothaarsteig (Bad Berleburg)

Back on the road, I noticed a sign for a wildlife park, so we decided to follow it! After about 20km cross country drive we finally got there!

It was for Wisent which is the German name for Wild Bison. At one time they became nearly extinct. Therefore conservationists are working to bring them back.

Wild Bison at Wisent Welt - Photo copyright Wisent Welt

I took some photos, but unfortunately the bison were pretty far from the fences. Their habitat was very large.

From the wildlife park wisent welt website you can find a lovely picture gallery and even videos. The site and entire communication on there is in German, but you might find it interesting nevertheless.

Apparently this Wildlife Park is unique in Europe - letting the bison roam through woodland. There are no cages! However, there is a large fence that protects the animals.

The visitors have to hike across uneven terrain through pine forests, there are no fortified footpaths as such. Part of the fun is exploration and discovery. It is very hilly.

 

 

Last, not least, if you are interested in more information here is a Link for Wikipedia.

I hope you enjoyed this travel post today. There will be more crochet news soon again, I promise!

Have you ever been to a wildlife park? Which animals did you see? Where was this?

More crochet news - Lion's foot flower stitch Scarf

Welcome back,


Crochet lion's foot flower stitch
 

On YouTube I found this helpful crochet tutorial on Oana's crochet channel:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpvI5Af2xl8


I was intrigued by the idea that you need to crochet in a right direction for the first row which is quite unusual! The whole flower pattern is made by working only 3 rows. As a result you will have a long flower ribbon which could be used as a border to an existing project (blanket, top, etc).

On the other hand, you can work several of these flower ribbons and join them as you work. This results in a larger 'fabric' and can be used to construct clothing and blankets.

How this works is all shown in the video.

I felt very inspired and decided to give it a go. So I started work on a Flower crochet Shawl, using some yarn I recently bought at Wolle Roedel in Germany.

The yarn is called Rico Creative Sport Print DK. 50 g = 145 m, suggested needle size 4.5 - 5.5mm.
It's a mix of 50% cotton and 50% Acrylic which makes it super soft and squishy!

You can also order it online: Rico Creative Sport Print dk 50g  (of course you might also find it at your own retailer!)


Here you can see my work in progress. I love the subtle changes of colour! You can see I'm using a 4mm hook which feels right to me as I crochet fairly loosely.

 

I am making a long scarf, but it would be really easy to join it to make a lovely cowl! I'm still working on it, one section at a time. I will let you see it when it is finished!

I wonder what you think of it, please let me know and leave me a comment below!

Hope you enjoyed this project!