Return to crochet - Rowan Denim Granny Stitch Shawl, Tahiti Bubblegum Shawl, a book, Granny Square Day 2016

Hello my lovely blog friends,


Thanks so much for your kind comments and patience! And welcome to my latest followers!


I can tell you that my plaster cast came off last Tuesday and that I got a wrist brace now so that is a great help. I'm also doing physiotherapy and I still got a long way to go to regain full movement and strength in both my wrist and elbow.

Still, the good news is that I started back with doing crochet, hooray!!


Return to crochet

The day before I broke my arm, I had actually started a new project - a granny stitch shawl.

Last week I picked up where I left off and I have been working on it since.


My Rowan Denim granny stitch shawl


Can you believe it that I never made an actual granny stitch shawl before? I had some wonderful Rowan Denim yarn (made from cotton) that will fade when washed, just like actual denim fabric.



Starting my Denim Granny stitch shawl on 15.07.16

back to work on 23.08.16



3 different shades of Denim yarn



Crocheting on the balcony with Jasper last night

It is such an easy and soothing pattern to follow. As you can see from the photos, I had started with the slightly darker shade of Denim (6 balls), then I had only 1 ball that was called original Denim which was a tiny shade lighter and now I got some even lighter Denim, all from Rowan. I love that it gives an ombre effect! I'm using a 4mm hook.



A second Bubblegum Shawl - Tahiti Bubblegum Shawl

Does this surprise you that I also had to start a new Bubblegum shawl ? The pattern by Katia Loeffler (see Ravelry) is brilliant, and I knew that I wanted to make another.

Here you can see the new beginnings:

3 different shades of Tahiti yarn by Schachenmayr

Yarn cakes!



Started 28.08.16

What else has been going on? Well, I ordered some crochet and knitting books. This one deserves a mention:

Agnieszka Strycharska - Crochet Blocks (60 east to make motifs and 15 stunning projects)

As you can see from the cover image, Agnieszka also loves colour and is a crochetgirl after my own heart. The photography in this book is beautiful, each motif is given a large colour photo with written and graph pattern! As I prefer graphs, I can skip straight to them and get started.

The yarn she uses is Natura cotton which is a lovely yarn to work with.

On Saturday morning I just picked a motif and tried it out!

In the third photo you can see some of the book, and the two blocks that I made with the cotton I had at hand! It shows how versatile these motifs are, they look great in different colours!

I want to play about with more of these motifs!


Oh, and something else happened - International Granny Square Day!!!


As before, on instagram crocheters all over the world could contribute by photographing one or more of their granny squares under the tag #grannysquareday2016.


Foolishly, I didn't want to miss out despite my painful broken wrist/arm/elbow and so I made just one square! For me it was a real achievement at the time.

My granny square made on 15.08.16

Here is a collage made just from a small number of all the contributions, isn't it amazing?

You can find more images here on instagram under #grannysquareday2016







Ok, I can see you starting to look a bit tired over there, 4 subjects are quite enough for one blog post!!!

Don't worry, there is still more to come and you can look forward to some interesting posts! I'm hoping to write up a pattern tutorial and I am thinking about doing a give away!

Meanwhile, take good care of yourselves and your loved ones, enjoy the little things wherever they find you and love life!

I hope you found a tiny bit of inspiration and would love it if you manage to leave me a comment, I enjoy reading them all. And hopefully I can manage to type some comments to leave on your pages now that my arm is slowly healing.

Rhododendron flowering in August!!

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?

Knitting post - the Barcelona Alpaca Jumper is finished!

Hello dear Blog friends,

Today another catch up post about something that I recently finished.


The Barcelona Jumper by Julie Jaeken

I started this jumper last year and worked on it on and off. The pattern came from Julie, the owner of the wonderful Julija's Woolshop here in Antwerp.

I previously blogged about this jumper in a post here.

Since we were planning on visiting England in early March, I realised that it would be great if I managed to finish off this jumper in time so I could take it along and finally hand it over to my daughter there!

Here are some photos that show the final steps.

Adding the sleeves

 

 

Finally, the finished jumper!

 

The neck line

extra long sleeves in rib pattern

simple neck line

 

Pattern from the book and my own version

my youngest daughter trying on the finished jumper

 

Together with my second oldest daughter on Mother's Day

My daughter loves her new jumper!

I made the sleeves a bit longer so the could be worn up or down to keep extra warm!

This is a great pattern and lovely in the soft and cosy Drops Alpaca Boucle yarn.

I did start a second jumper (for myself) which will have to wait.... Right now I want to work on more things for the coming warmer season.

Looking forward to reading your comments!

Growing flowers, some unexpected gifts, a(nother) knitted hat, and Springflower Squares

Hello my dear blogfriends!

Thanks so much for all your kind comments on my last post! Seems there was something for everybody!

Welcome to my latest new followers, it's lovely to see you here!

Some of you have started following me on instagram which is fun!!!

Growing Flowers

No, not actual flowers, but those of a crochet nature! You may recall my recent post here. Well, on Sunday I finally had the chance to continue on this project. So far I had crocheted 21 tiny flowers, I continued until I had got a total of 40, plus a made a larger flower, too. The tiny flowers were meant to be Forget Me Nots (which I love), and often they came in slightly different shades, not just blue! I used Lang Mille Colori Baby and a tiny 1.5mm hook!

I love making Crochet Jewellery, I have made lots of it in the past before I started this blog!

I used 2 bronze coloured chains and matching findings. I connected each flower with the next with little jump rings, then added a lobster clasp closure.

The beauty of this necklace (apart from the tiny flowers) is how versatile it is, because it can be worn in different ways!

My Tiny Flower Necklace

The Pendant Flower which can be attched in different places

Detail of the lobster clasp closure

Version 1: double layered necklace with pendant flower

 

Version 2: Flower Necklace and Chain necklace together form one long necklace

Versions 3+4: Two seperate necklaces

The lovely colour run between the flowers

Pendant Flower is 3cm, the tiny flowers are 1.5cm

 

You could also clip the Pendant Flower at the back of the neck, this looks nice and eyecatching, especially if you wear your hair short!

I really love how this necklace has turned out, it is so delicate and pretty!


Some unexpected gifts

Both yesterday and today I had some wonderful surprises in the post!

A lovely craft book and a colourful planner

My brother and his wife send me the Dawanda Craft Book and an amazing Calendar with their own photos taken in Tenerife!

A good friend sent me a very colourful planner!!!

A wonderful Photo Calendar

A Knitting Compendium (in Dutch)

And I got the answer to all my knitting questions in the shape of a very thick and thorough book from the parents of my partner!


A(nother) knitted hat

Yes, I am knitting yet another hat, this one is a commission for a friend who recently asked me to make her one practically identical to mine in Red. (I recently blogged about it here). It will soon be finished!

A knitted hat in Red

New Springflower Squares

Well, I really should have finished the hat this morning, but fate intervened and I saw this free pattern online on the blog Made with loops!

So, what did I do? Yes, you guessed it, I started playing with yarn! I brought out my Scheepjeswol Stonewashed yarn and select 2 different colourschemes (total 6 colours).

Here you can see the results! I made 4 granny squares which measure about 9.5cm each. This is such a pleasant and fun pattern and not difficult (especially if you tried making traditional granny squares before). The flowers make it cheerful and funky! ;) Give it a go!!!

Trying out a new pattern!

My first Springflower Square (Pattern by Heike Gittins)

I quite like the flowers at the front with just 3 rows!

20.01.15 Ta-dah!! The 4 Springflower Squares I made today!

Right, after all this crochet diversion I really must be getting back to my hat knitting!!!

As always, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! I really love getting your comments and reading them, so please leave me a little note or two...