Beautiful September Days and some new things in the making

Welcome back! 

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my recent makes and a warm welcome to my new readers! I also want to thank each and every one of you for inspiring me with your makes, your friendship, your strength of character and also your sense of humour! I'm eager to read what has been happening in your world and I want to contribute!

I thought this time I will show you a few other things, apart from my crochet! On Monday night there was a beautiful clear full moon (whilst I was waiting for a bus home after my evening class), sadly I cannot show you a picture because I didn't have my camera with me. So the next day I carried it with me on my travels out and about. This is what the weather looked like on Tuesday lunchtime:

Beautiful sunshine in September!

Schelle

The Church in Schelle

These are pictures from my neighbourhood where I live (Schelle). The Church is a landmark and can be seen from afar.

After my knitting/crocheting group on Tuesday afternoon I took a tram ride across town to Mortsel which is part of Antwerp. Here I managed to track down some wool I needed! As you can see it was still a nice day, but in the afternoon it went more cloudy. Often you can see pretty flower displays in public places.

A Flower Display in Mortsel, Antwerpen

And here for some updates on the crochet front! First of all, I have started making some more granny squares, just for the fun of it. I love using that Veritas Laura yarn, nice and chunky, it is fun to work with.

Furthermore you can see the scarf I have been knitting, it was finished on Monday.

Sunday evening I had started with a matching hat. (This is for my son's birthday, pssst!)

Monday: Mystery Granny Squares and WIP: Scarf and Hat

By this morning I had turned the remaining 3 smaller squares into big ones! (If in doubt, crochet a granny square!!!)

Wednesday: And then there were 8!

To give you a better idea of their size: Each square measures about 15 cm across (6" for my English friends!)

Just look at these whoppers!!!

Tuesday: Hat and Scarf finished - Ta-dah!

Here is the finished Hat and Scarf Set (it's going to be soft and warm to wear!) - which I am going to hand over in person this Saturday (because we are going to visit my Son for his birthday, yay!!)

Mystery WIP - 3 balls of yarn

The Mystery WIP has also grown enormously! Luckily I managed to find some more of this yarn on Monday, phew! Still debating the possibilities as I got several ideas for this.

Cleo is keeping an eye on things here!

Today I got very busy with yarn!!! No, not crocheting, but winding! Cleo, my cat kept me company and watched the proceedings!

First you take a lot of yarn (by which I mean 21 balls of 100g!) which look super pretty in their little bags. Then you wind as hard as you can, for as long as you can, until you think your arm is going to drop off, or that you could not possibly unknot yet another 23 knots in one ball of yarn alone, or that you have to go back to the kitchen for yet another cup of coffee to sustain you! You don't even pause and carry on winding whilst having phone conversations (time is running out!!!) And most of all, you don't even ask yourself what possessed you to buy such a bumper crop of yarn in the first place!

My Stylecraft Stash (from Loveknitting)

In the end, it was all worth it, just to see them next to each other like this:

After much winding - some lovely yarn cakes! Yumm!!!

Well, to be precise: I wound about half of each ball so that my project would be portable! (I try not to think about the other half yet!). So what am I going to do with this rainbow of yarn? I am going to make a blanket! This evening I went to another craft group and I had a go with doing some test crochet squares!

This rose started flowering again with the warmer weather recently

Just a couple of pictures from my 'garden', I mean balcony garden! One of the roses has produced new flowers which are very pretty. And I am eagerly watching my sunflowers as they get bigger and start to open up slowly!!

I got 3 tall sunflowers which are starting to flower

Well, by now you are starting to get to know me better, you already know how much I love colour! And seeing these yarn cakes together like that makes me happy, plain and simple!

Hope your week has been a good one! Leave me a comment or two, let me know what's been happening or what you think, I'd love to hear from you! I'll try to answer when I can (but I will be in England this weekend, to which I am looking forward a lot! I might be visiting the odd tea room or two!)

A Summer Shawl's Tale

Hello again!

Remember I started this Summer Shawl on Thursday night? Well this is what it looked like after I spent quite a long time working on it during Friday. It didn't seem to grow much!!! I was using a fine yarn (Ezra) and my trusted 3mm hook.

Summer Shawl Version 1

Then I decided to try out a different yarn. I dug through my stash and came across this Flamingo Pink (!) Extra Soft Merino Cotton by SMC Select (70% Pure New Wool, 30% Cotton), recommended hook size: 3-4 mm. Ok, let's try this with a size 5mm hook! By Friday evening I had hooked up a similar size triangle with 4 pattern repeats (instead of 7).

Version 1 (Blue) vs Version 2 (Pink)

This close up shows the difference in stitch size better

And here's one I made earlier!

Well, I know, that is not a shawl! It is a WIP! I had started knitting a neckwarmer in Spring in 3 colours, but I lost interest due to the fact I got annoyed with winding the different colour yarn after each round. Well, I thanked my earlier self because this meant I could recover the 3 balls of yarn all in one long string, as it had not been cut! So I got busy with my wool winder...

Progress on Saturday morning

Saturday was busy. On our travels out we found the perfect little table for our balcony. Just big enough to put down a drink and my crochet. Purple and perfect!!

Sitting outside on the balcony enjoying the evening sunshine!

I also bought some bamboo sticks for my plants. My little sunflowers needed a bit of support! And Jasper is relaxing in his favourite spot!

Jasper loves sunflowers, too!

 Here are the bigger sunflowers, the front one had gotten bent and damaged, so I'm hoping now it might recover. Still waiting for them to start flowering. Nothing like a bit of (tiny) yarnbombing!

The larger sunflower plants - spot the yarn!

 This is what 2 x 50g yarn looks like!

Sunday morning Shawl

Meanwhile I am nearly finished with the 3rd ball of yarn. The pattern calls for a total of 4x50 g Crochet Cotton (1 of them for the contrast coloured border - you might just see this in the photo above with the book in the background). I have a feeling I will be using more. I am pondering the following questions: How large should I make this? How about using the Orange Mango coloured yarn for the top and the Blackcurrant one for the border? I only got one more ball of Pink left. It measures now 138 (of 155cm) wide and 85 of 95 cm measured on each side.

I showed you this to illustrate that sometimes, even if you are trying to follow a pattern, things do not always turn out as expected. And I am pleased with myself that I had the nerve to undo my knitting! There is no time like the present! (However, I can assure you, I still got plenty of WIP left) I don't regret it, the yarn I gained is really lovely, soft and squishy to the touch. Everything is a learning curve!