Hello December! Two granny square blankets, a chunky wrap and progress on the Fortune's Shawlette

Hello all,


Wow, December is finally here... no snow yet, at least none that stayed! When the weather is turning cold and windy, then it's ideal to spend the dark evenings with some nice crochet at home.

Thanks for your lovely comments on my last makes, it always touches my heart to hear from you. Meanwhile I have started working on some new projects, more about that later.

I hope my American friends enjoyed their holiday season!



My finished granny square blanket for a boy

Here I got some photos for you to show off the finished blanket that I talked about in my last post.

As soon as the above blanket was finished, I got started on another granny square blanket! This one is for the boy's baby sister!



A granny square blanket for a baby girl

I started with 6 colours in warm shades, ranging from yellow to lilac. The yarn is Stylecraft Special DK, as before with the other blanket. Each ball of yarn is 100 g.

I kept working away, my goal was to crochet 6x squares every day.  Soon I had about 11 squares for each colour.

I decided to mix things up a bit, making squares with 4 different colours in each!

First, I went through all the different permutations which resulted in 25 mini squares!

Playing with my squares on the floor!

 

 

I began to turn those mini squares into full size ones!

This was what it looked like yesterday!!!

Today I have started my assembly, attaching the squares row for row! I will let you know when it is finished, still lots more work to do for now!!!



A chunky crochet wrap or lap blanket

I also made this wrap to keep my shoulders warm, I used 3x 100g  Auraucania Budi with an 8mm crochet hook!!

It was done pretty quickly, I used a simple V-stitch pattern! (15x Vs in a row). The hand dyed yarn colours vary between a deep to a light rose pink, and black to pale grey.

The finished size is 36cm x 104 cm. It's lovely warm!

Here you can see one of the skeins and one already rolled up into a yarn cake!

 

My Fortune's Shawlette

Here is the progress on my not so small Shawlette, I took it with me on the train to Gent last week when I went to visit my daughter there! I draped it over the chair on the train to get a picture!

That's it for now.... more to come in the following days!

If you want to leave me a comment, please do! Have you been making any Christmas gifts for your loved ones? Do tell..... ;)

A colourful neckerchief, a textured facecloth and a new Scheepjes CAL plus a baby blanket

Welcome back, my dear blog friends,

Come on in, can I offer you a cool drink perhaps? I have plenty of things to show you again....

Well, isn't summer just flying past?! Each of my grown up children came to visit from England, one after another, so there hasn't been any time for blogging. I was very happy to have seen them and we had a great time together. We also visited my family in Germany.

I have some finished projects to share with you. I hope you will find some new inspiration here!


A granny-square Heart

I found this cute little pattern via pinterest. I would like to use it as a warm welcome to all my latest followers. I am truly touched that you come to visit my little virtual crochet corner!

You will find the actual pattern on this blog page.

Of course I had to try it out. What do you think, do you like it? It works up quickly. Wouldn't it look nice as a garland perhaps? Or use it on a special handmade card or as part of gift wrapping!



A colourful neckerchief

After my colourful Funky Crochet Top, I still had some of the same Lana Grossa yarn, but in another colourway. This one was a mix of vibrant colours, such as red, blue and yellow amongst others.

I only had to balls of this yarn (2x50g), so it wasn't enough to make a larger shawl. What I did was to crochet a sort of mini shawl with ties. It sits like a neckerchief around the neckline.

A funkycrochet pattern for a textured facecloth

This was something I crocheted up pretty quickly.

Here is my own simple pattern.
I used a pure cotton yarn with colour changes and a 3mm hook.
The finished size is a square of 18cm.
I worked with 40 stitches in a row. (obviously begin each row with corresponding chains)


First row = chains
Second row =double crochet into back of each stitch
Third row =double crochet into back of each stitch
Fourth row =treble crochet into back of each stitch

Then repeat rows 2-4 until desired size. Crochet around with double crochet once. Finished!!

You will notice the textured rib on the surface of each side of the cloth.
You can use any sort of cotton or bamboo yarn for this. Might also be a nice stash buster!

Feel free to give it a go, and let me know how you get on!

A new granny-square blanket

I still have quite a lot of Stylecraft acrylic yarn left from a previous project, so I decided to start a new blanket for my friend's little son. I chose three shades of blue and two of red. I am making 4round granny- squares.

I started this when my daughter and her best friend were here, we had a granny-square workshop. I showed them how to make them, step by step. We had a lot of fun!

This is a project that in work on from time to time.

The Scheepjes CAL 2015

When I found out about the new crochet along from Scheepjeswol, I was very interested. Especially since they released a new yarn called Linen Soft. My problem so far has been trying to get hold of it locally. I ordered some initial quantity from England, but it took a whole two weeks (after despatch) to arrive.

You can find all the necessary steps in 10x weekly instructions on the Scheepjeswol website.
They are available in several languages and apparently there are also videos.

For some internet images see here. So far I haven't found any images of a completed shawl as yet.

I only begun with this project recently, the reason will become apparent in my next post (where you will see what crochet project has really consumed me this summer....)

Which means that I can work on it more concentratedly now, especially since all the instructions are complete and I don't need to wait.

Here you can see my progress so far.

Well, this rounds up another lengthy blog post for today.
Hope you enjoyed reading it!

As always, feel free to leave me your comments, I love to read them!!!
Thanks for your time!
By the way, do you want another cool drink?

A simple Shrug, a glimpse of Vordenstein, a Trip to Lier and Knitting Inspiration

Hello, my crochet friends, how are you all?

Finally I can tell you about my weekend when my family came to visit from Germany! I took so many photos, so I've been trying to edit them for you which took a while.

My family arrived late on Friday afternoon, and first my mum stayed with me, whilst my brother and his wife went on a quick dash into Antwerp! We sat on the balcony, the sun was shining and we had all 3 cats keeping us company which was nice! It was lovely to catch up and very relaxing to spend the time this way! I did a bit of knitting as well. Later we all went out for a wonderful evening meal together.

On Saturday the weather was absolutely glorious, beautiful sunshine and blue sky! It must have been more than 25 degrees, just like a summer day but this was in early October!

To make it easier for my mother to cope with walking, it was decided to go on a gentle walk visiting Vordenstein near Schoten. I was very thrilled about this idea, because we had been there once before fairly recently, and that time I didn't have a camera with me, something I remembered this time!

This is the sign outside the park at Vordenstein, which explains that the park has both French elements (straight lined paths) as well as English ones (more natural looking places). Amazingly anyone can visit this park for free!

Welcome to Vordenstein!

First we walked along these giant but gentle creatures...

Cows grazing in a field along the path

admiring the trees... most of them still showing green leaves...

Gorgeous blue sky

First Autumn colours

Then we came to the Park entrance, the gate was open...

The gated entrance to the park

As soon as we were inside there was this great feeling of space and calm (must have been the English influence the sign mentioned, I am convinced!)

Wide open spaces and beautiful trees

We followed the path and saw the walls which were surrounding the gardens (you might see it in the photo below towards the centre right in the distance)

Turning right towards the Gardens

Another tall tree...

I admit: I was naughty and strayed from the beautiful (and French!) paths and approached the walls from the side, I was eager to catch a first glimpse inside!

Catching a glimpse of the Gardens at Vordenstein

What was lying behind those gates? That is for another post! (Sorry to tease you here, but there was so much to see, it would have made this post impossibly long!) Please check back soon!

After our little walk around Vordenstein, we drove to another town, called Lier.
It is really pictoresque. Read more info about Lier

The houses opposite the Town Hall and the wide open space in front of it

Town Hall and Belltower, Lier

Zimmer Tower in Lier featuring 12 special clocks

More about the Zimmer Tower here (Interesting Wikipedia link)

On Sunday my family had to return to Germany, but we were so glad that we managed to spend so much time together and also that the weather had been extremely warm on both Friday and Saturday. The warm spell broke on Saturday evening whilst we were going out for a nice meal, it started to pour with rain!

And now a bit more about my current projects!

My Shrug is finished!
 
I knitted up the 6 balls of chunky yarn from Rico and this is what it looked like at the end: a rectangle measuring approx 70cm x 105cm.

Finished knitting! (06.10.14)

After adding 2 crochet seams

My new shrug (07.10.14)

From the back

(I know there seem to be a lot of stripes going on in these pictures, I only realized that afterwards!)

one more time!

As you can see, it is very light, yet stretchy and very warm! Apart from wearing it as a shrug, it could also double up as a scarf wound around the neck or as an extremely bulky cowl! Not to mention as an emergency blanket!!!

I'm totally loving the colours and the stripes and I'm happy that I had changed my mind midway and started afresh! It was worth it! I've been wearing it constantly since it's been finished!

Harlequin Blanket

I believe this photo was taken on Friday morning, it is the first photo I took where you can see the entire width of the blanket properly. The ruler measures 1m, so the blanket will be slightly over 2m wide!!!

Blanket laid out - Ruler measures 1m

Here some further progress the last 2 days (more crochet and less knitting, I guess!)

Harlequin Blanket 07.10.14

I'm currently enjoying pastel ice cream colours (Vanilla, Strawberry and Mint) after the 2 rows below which reminded me of blue mountain tops with snowcapped tops, underneath you can 'read' my Autumn colours (which I bought at the Hobbybeurs). Every row/ccolour sequence will remind me of the exact time when I crocheted it!

Adding Pale Mint Green

Here another sideway view close up.

Harlequin Blanket 08.10.14

Today I was busy with lots of household things, and this afternoon I got stuck in with trying to re-organize my craft magazines... I emptied out my cupboard, and started to get all my magazines together to put them onto the bookshelf instead of having them in various locations and boxes. This will make it easier, if I want to look up a pattern or at least that is the idea! They are looking good on the shelf now.

Meanwhile I had taken out half the contents of my cupboard, as well as 'finding' things here and there, so there were bits and pieces all over the floor. Finally I wanted to tidy up the rest and this is what I saw:

Cleo in the craft cupboard

Cleo must have thought, this is too mad, all this stuff in the way, and decided to lie in the cupboard instead! Or maybe she thought I had done it especially for her?!!! She was utterly at home in there! (I quickly grabbed the camera and snapped this photo before I had to 'evict' her!)

Last - not least, let me share with you some knitting patterns, at least in photos! My mum brought me the latest Brigitte magazines from Germany, upon my special request, since it contained a Knitting Special Feature with lots of Patterns.

Photos of the finished  Brigitte Knitting patterns - there are 84 photos!!!!

You can see them here in this photo, together with the original magazine and another little feature booklet which I found inside entitled 'Masche' (which translates as stitch) - showing even more wonderful things to knit - released by 'Initiative fuer Handarbeit'. Their website is here! It is a treasure trove of ideas and every one of these pattern featured in Masche is shown on their website with links to download the pattern/s for FREE!!! (Sorry, my English speaking readers - you would need to understand German to benefit from the actual patterns, but nevertheless take a look, I find the images themselves are so inspiring!)

Here is the Masche booklet in .pdf format, so you can browse through it yourselves!
Masche - Stricken macht gluecklich (Knitting makes you happy)

Sometimes it is amazing how many (good) free patterns there are about! I am subscribed to various online wool shops and very often their emails contain links to free patterns (usually available to those who are subscribed only), so it might be worthwhile to sign up, if you haven't done so already! (Of course, if your inbox is too full already this might not be a great idea!)

Let me just briefly mention that I noticed that a new Knit along (KAL) has started on the Rowan website - here, plus blogger Wink is featuring a Crochet along (CAL) here.

Many thanks for your lovely comments, I loved reading them. And yes, you guessed right, please feel free to leave a comment below, looking forward to read what you thought!