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..... ;)

The finished Baby Blanket made from crochet squares

Hello again!

I just wanted to show you the baby blanket I finished this Tuesday and which I handed over to a friend from my Dutch class. She absolutely loved it!!!

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy!

The finished blanket is made of 7 x 7 crochet squares which measure approx 12cm across. The finished blanket size is approx. 84cm x 84cm. The squares are attached with the pale pink Apilou yarn.

Some close-up photos to show the details. I crocheted a simple shell border all around.

I was quite pleased with how even my crochet looked! It was a lot of work to block each of the 49 squares individually but it was definitely worth the effort.

For the finishing touch I made a long crochet chain with 2 mini squares to wrap around the blanket so it would look nice!

I had to work hard every day to get it finished within 2 weeks, which meant I didn't get much time to do any other crochet. Now that it is done, I can finally get back to them...

Do you like making blankets? What are your experiences? What is your favourite blanket style/pattern? Do you prefer making modules (such as squares) or working on one piece?

I would love to hear your opinions, please leave me a little comment below. I look forward to reading them!

PS: More catch up posts coming up shortly!!!

My latest project: Making a baby blanket

Hello dear Blogfriends,

Thanks for all your lovely comments and your patience, too! I love to welcome a number of new followers, glad to have you here!

As always, I hope you will find some inspirations here!

Since my last blog post quite a few things have happened, and I feel like I should apologize that it has taken me this long for an update. Sorry folks!!!

But you know how it is:

Not all that wander are lost!

One thing was that I went through various tests and the end exams for my Dutch classes....

Another that I had a dental operation on my jaw a week ago and have been slowly recovering from it, it still hurts a lot, though the swelling has gone down a lot.

And last, but also with a lot of impact, our cat Twinkle has gone missing recently which was very much out of character for him since he never ventured outside the house (and he didn't know his surroundings here in Belgium). We have tried everything we could to find him so far, but without success. Twinkle is the brother of Jasper and we had both of them since birth. We are very upset and miss him.

Twinkle

Well, to show you what I have been up to, I decided to break it down a bit. I'm still having computer problems and this makes blogging more difficult. So instead one long catch up post, I will try to do a few more following this one. Promise!!!

Making a baby blanket

This is what I am currently working on, much to my own surprise. A girl in my Dutch class is expecting her first child, she knows it will be a girl. So I spontaneously offered to crochet her a blanket, I hadn't previously thought about it. So I started on Tuesday, 12th May. Initially I said I would do it over the summer, but as I got started, I thought maybe I can do it quicker?

So I started making crochet squares, pink and white ones from Veritas Apilou acrylic yarn.

First I was aiming to make 2 every day, meanwhile I have stepped up to making 5 a day!!!

My initial idea: 5 x 9 squares (a rectangle) - 45

Then I saw that a square blanket might look better

So I adapted my idea to make it 7 x 7 squares (49)

I hope you enjoyed this (long overdue) post. Let me know what you have been working on, I must admit that I seem to have a backlog when it comes to reading blog posts and leaving comments... hopefully things will get better soon!

Please leave me some comments, I love hearing from you all! And to the new followers: How did you find my blog (just curious!!!)

Meanwhile... Happy crocheting and knitting!!!

The finishing bug

Hello all!

I hope you all had a relaxing weekend? Managed to find some time to enjoy being with family and friends?

Things have been pretty busy here! Oh, and I caught the finishing bug! No, it's nothing serious! (I have a lot to show you now).

Friday I started this:

Crocheting some more potholders, consisting of 2 different layers. I made this with my favourite yarn of this summer, Scheepjeswol Stone Washed. As soon as I had seen the first post mentioning this yarn, I knew I had to try it! It is 78% Cotton with 22% Acrylic and is machine washable. I have been using a 3mm hook.
It gives a lovely textured look in my opinion.

Crochet Potholders

Close up of the front

Showing front and back before assembly

Saturday we had a busy day, driving to Brussels Charleroi airport to collect a friend coming to visit. This meant lots of crochet time in the car, yay! :)

I continued with the potholders and finished them on Saturday evening, with the help of our cat, Jasper!

Jasper crochets too!

The finished potholders

Sunday I finished a crochet Shawl, the South Bay Shawlette from Lion Brand, you will find the free pattern here.

I love this pattern! It is easier than I first thought, and I have already made several versions this summer, more of that another time!

This one is made with a thicker Cotton yarn (Catania Grande) - about 400g. I love the Orchid colour! I used a 6mm hook.

The lacy pattern is very eye catching and pretty

The weather on Sunday was terrible, we ended up having torrential rain, so not a chance of going for a walk anywhere. Luckily that meant everyone had time to follow their favourite hobbies. My daughter and her friend helped me greatly with winding some of the yarn! Then we had a nice round of card games. Later that day I returned to my crochet Baby Blanket (made with Apilou Acrylic Yarn from Veritas), crocheted the last row and then proceeded to do the border. This took way longer than anticipated. Around 1 am I had gotten as far as doing one side of the scalloped Shell edging which is the last row! Unfortunately I was too tired to stay up any longer to finish it off on Sunday night.

Scalloped edging

Monday: The weather had improved, the sun was shining! After visiting Hoboken (part of Antwerp) market and making some vital yarn purchases, my partner and I went for a leisurely long walk through the parks and then around Hoboken Fort (which is surrounded by water). We managed to see 3 herons in total, I was amazed! And 2 cute cats. But unfortunately I did not take a camera along!

The rest of the afternoon I spent finishing off the baby blanket! Woohoo! I was so pleased, because I had been putting it off due to the fact that it had close to 300 ends that needed sewing up!

Jasper testing the blanket immediately

The finished blanket lying flat on the floor

Jasper did not want to leave the blanket!

Soft and Squishy!

Update: This evening we drove to see our friends to deliver the blanket, they loved it! It was definitely worth all the hard work!

In summary: I spent the last 4 days concentrating on finishing projects, because I want to move on to some of the WIP I still got to do! Not to mention start lovely new things that I keep seeing elsewhere!

What have you all been working on? Do you have a favourite project you like best? What are your experiences with different yarns?