New Blue Shawlette

Hello my blog friends,


Thanks so much for all your lovely comments and birthday wishes*, much appreciated!

Meanwhile I came up with another idea for as shawl and got started straight away!

I had some Drops Delight sock yarn in different shades of blue which seemed like a good choice!
To be on the safe side, I did order some extra, just in case!

Since this is fingering weight yarn, a 3.5mm hook is recommended, but I went with a 4mm as I wanted it to be more lacy! Also, I crochet a bit loosely, so another person might get the same result with a 4.5mm if they crochet tightly!


Blue Shawlette


My design started out with the longest side of the shawl. This meant I had to decide how large I wanted to make it. I decided to go with a shawlette size, something that is large enough to wrap around the neck and wear at the front, or alternatively, wear it open and just over the shoulders.

I started on Wednesday and finished it this afternoon. By that I mean that the main body of the shawl is complete, but it still needs to be blocked and then I will design a border that goes with it.

So, this is the shawl - as it currently is!!!

(pictures are in reverse order!)

Blue Shawlette 08.01.2017

This afternoon...

This morning - in the snow and wearing my new boots!

I enjoyed creating this design and part of the fun is that the rows get shorter each time! :)



*My birthday

I had a lovely day, spent it mostly with my youngest daughter who baked an(other) fantastic cake! Later we went into Antwerp and I bought some things with my birthday money! In the evening we went for a Mexican meal!

So, that's all for now, until next time!

Have a great week!!

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!!

My finished Rainbow Bubble Gum Shawl

Welcome back, old friends and new,*


After 10 busy days doing the Crochet Along for the Bubble Gum Shawl, I finished it last night!

I am really pleased with it, and due to the many colours I have renamed it:


My Rainbow Bubble Gum Shawl


Here are some photos to show it to you!

It looks equally good worn at the front or the back

10.07.16 My finished Rainbow Bubble Gum Shawl

 

 

Nearly finished all the yarn!

Side Edge detail with the smaller 'bubbles'

my growing shawl - curling inner edge

 

Splicing the yarn colours

One side edge with spikes

You will have to excuse me not blocking my shawl, but I just couldn't wait to start wearing it already... It might possibly be my most favourite shawl that I made so far, but on the other hand that is a difficult statement - I made so many lovely shawls and I love them all!

If you want to see some of my shawls, check out this blog post here if you haven't read it before.

For more information on this project, read my previous blog post here and also here.

For those of you on Ravelry, you can see my completed project (again) on this page. You will also find the original pattern link there. Please note that this pattern is no longer free, as the CAL 2016 is finished. I do hope you managed to download this pattern for free like I did!!! Even so, it is a wonderful pattern and well written out, row by row, so for a small charge it can be yours! The designer is called Katia Loeffler.

I found this pattern easy to follow, you will soon get into the rhythm of it. Instead of the 16 spikes in the pattern, I worked 20 spikes as I wanted to carry on until the yarn ran out more or less.

The side edge has a similar pattern with smaller bubbles which adds interest.

In order to achieve my rainbow of colours, I just looked at the yarn and decided to splice it by starting a different ball of yarn in similar colours that carried on to a different range of colours. If you look very, very closely at the photos, you might see the yarn ends which I left so you could see where I started a different colour way. Now they are all sewn up, you cannot guess where they were!


* and as for 'old' and 'new' friends, I wasn't referring to age, but more to longstanding followers and to the amazing influx of new followers I have - wow, thanks for signing up! Hello also to my lovely followers on instagram and your unwavering support there as well! I'm just so happy to have found so many like minded people!

My little instagram page is here!


I hope this has provided you with fresh inspiration! Thanks for your visit, please write a little note in my visitor's book below, I love reading your comments!