Tag: yarnporn

Lunchtime hooky…

crochet, Shawls, yarn

So I am not the only yarnhead where I work. I have two colleagues who are also demon crocheters and we are trying to get into the habit of meeting up at lunchtime to crochet together and share our makes.  One of them has been pattern testing the first shawl to go into shawl club (no major issues, I am pleased to report, so that is a relief!) and the other one is going to pattern test shawls for me but is in the middle of a textured cowl using yak yarn at the moment and cannot put it down.  Anyway, lunchtime is now a bit of an oasis in what can be some very long days, and a good excuse to turn away from the computer screen and have a non-work related conversation.  We have made a pact to go to Fibre East this year  and already getting giddy at the prospect as last year we had perfect weather on the day we went and we are hoping for a repeat.

I love these women.  One of them is responsible for teaching me to crochet in the first place, so she has a lot to answer for.  The other is great fun as we send each other pictures of our latest hand-dyed purchases when we get home, and we egg each other on to make completely unjustifiable yarn purchases when we are stressed.  We all need a friend like that, right?

Anyway, I am busy experimenting with my pattern for Shawl #4, which I have a concept for and its working from a technical point of view but I am not sure whether I love it yet. The other shawls so far have been more open / lacy and this one is more of a solid looking shawlette, and I am worried that people will have reservations about it.  The colours pictured here are not the ones that I will eventually be using for the finished shawl, I just needed to grab a couple of skeins from my stash to play with and these seemed to fit the bill.  They are pretty though – the one on the right is a King Becky pixel yarn (colourway – Soma) and it is lovely to work with.  I will probably keep this for me regardless of whether the finished product ends up in shawl club but we will see.  I will have a think about whether I can make it a bit more open without messing up the main concept too much.  I have an idea, but I just need to play with it a bit more.

A one-skein make…

crochet, scarves

So this weekend I promised my Instagram followers that I would put up some instructions on how to make this very pretty, and very simple scarf / cowl, which uses up one skein of sock or DK weight yarn, depending on what you have in your stash and how long you want it to be.  I have made it quite a lot, and I am making it again at the moment which has given me the chance to take some pictures as I go so you can see how I made it.  This picture above is a version I made in a Lollipop Guild sock yarn (merino).  I have also made it in sock weight merino / bamboo mix, and it is lovely and soft and cosy for a lightweight scarf (see below).

photo 36

The yarn in this picture was from Jo.Knit.Sew, who makes cracking yarns and the colour pooling on this project was the best I have seen, forming a spontaneous zig zag pattern!

At the moment I am making it with a merino / silk mix yarn, again from Lollipop Guild Yarns (called Snow Angel if you want the colour way!).

So, this is how to make it…

If you are working with sock, use a 4mm hook.  If you are using DK I would suggest a 5mm hook, but you might want to play around with it until you get the texture and drape you want, as I tend not to block these scarves.

Chain 34.  (If you want to adjust the width, either add or subtract in multiples of 3 to this number).

Row 1. Treble (UK Term), into the 4th chain from hook, chain 2, and double crochet (UK Term) into the same space.  *Skip 2 chains, then treble twice into the next stitch, chain 2, and then double crochet once into the same stitch**.  Repeat from * to ** to end of chain.  Turn.

Row 2. Chain 3, treble into the chain 2 space in the row below, chain 2 and then double crochet into the same chain 2 space of the shell in the row below…  

*Treble into the next chain 2 space twice, chain 2, then double crochet once into the same space**.  Repeat from * to ** to end.

Then you just repeat this last row (I have put the row in bold to make it clear which row I mean) over and over until the scarf is the length you want. You will end up with a really pretty scalloped edge to the length of the work.

photo 35

It is your choice whether to leave it as a scarf or sew the short ends together to make a cowl-type scarf.  Sew in your ends and admire your work!

Let me know how you get on.

 

Shawl club has launched!

crochet, Shawls, yarn

So finally I can tell you a bit about what I have been working on.  Tonight I have launched a shawl club with Sam from Unbelieva-wool.  I am beyond excited – her yarns are beautiful and I have had great fun plotting this behind the scenes with her!  So the plan is that you can sign up for a series of yarn boxes, each one about 6 weeks apart, and each one will contain a skein of her yarn which has been dyed to suit the pattern I have written (all of which are new and have not been published before), and a extra something that will help you to do the pattern, plus the pattern itself.  The yarns will be either standard merino sock yarn or a luxury base.  And I am so giddy tonight with the interest in this.  We will do the club for about 8 months and then see if folk want us to continue.

The patterns themselves will be a mixture of styles and shapes to keep it interesting and I am really pleased with how they are coming out so far!  Once everyone has received their boxes I will do a little reveal on this page.

If you are interested in signing up, click the link here and complete the online form.  The first invoices will be payable by the end of March so we know what numbers we are working with.  If you live outside the UK, it is worth knowing that Sam is happy to ship overseas if you let her know on the sign up form so that she can tweak the price to allow for the extra postage.

In the meantime I am also working on some other patterns to go up on Ravelry on the 7th April, including the Moo-Ra dress, a hat pattern, a rather lovely wrap, and a few other bits and bobs.  And as a special thank you to you, my blog-watchers, I will be putting up some free patterns on this site over the next few weeks.

 

Having my cake…

crochet, yarn

OK, so today was a horrible weather day.  It rained heavily all last night and this morning I had to be up early for a very grown up meeting at work.  The sky was dark and it was still raining and miserable, and the roads were starting to flood as I drove to work.  I spent the day running from one part of the university campus to the other for meetings, becoming progressively more like a drowned rat as the day wore on.  And the last meeting was one of those ones that left me feeling a bit twitchy and agitated.  The small person was exhausted today too, so an early night for her, and a bit of yarn therapy for me.  Some new and beautiful skeins in the post to squish (shhh!  I have posted pictures on my instagram feed if you want to see them) and the chance to cake some others ready for a bit of a making frenzy.  The picture shows my latest yarn caking set up in my room, and the yarn pictured is ‘Psyche’ by Unbelievawool, which is just a little bit lovely.

I am due for some leave over Easter, so I want to have a nice pile of yarn cakes to take with me so I can get plenty of hooking in, and maybe even a pair of knitted socks.  And then when I am back I will upload some patterns to Ravelry and link to them here so you can see what I have been busy working on for the last month or so.  And I should be able to finally tell you about one of my top secret projects this weekend, I hope, so watch this space.  In the meantime, don’t forget to let me know what sort of things you struggle to find patterns for, or what sort of stuff you would like me to have a go at designing for you.  At the moment I have some ideas for clothing for children and adults that I want to have a crack at. But I am up for a challenge, and its a good way of getting a pattern named after you if its a good one!

One final note, thank you all so much for your support and enthusiasm so far!  The blog has taken off much more quickly than I had dared to hope it might. I have plans to reward you for your support so watch this space!

Tired, but not of yarn…

crochet, yarn

So, about an hour ago I hit ‘the wall’.  The week has caught up with me and I can barely keep my eyes open, and I feel exhausted.  After I have done this post, I will retire to my bed with a cup of tea and a blanket and try to get some rest.  And yet my head can do that magical thing with ‘work’ that small children can do with food.  Just as a child can complain of being not hungry but is ravenous for desert, my head might want to sleep and stop thinking about the day job, but somehow it also wants me to sit and write up the pattern to the retro granny square ripple blanket.  My crochet habit is clearly deepening, and I need a fix of something yarny before I head for bed.

I could, of course, spend some time fondling my latest yarn pets.  This week has been a bit of a treat on the postal front – my YarnMama purchases have arrived over a number of days, interspersed with yarn boxes that I ordered a while back but which arrived in the same week. So its been a bit like Christmas around here, with my daughter helping me to open the parcels and making appropriate ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ noises, and stealing any additional chocolate treats that might have been popped into the packages.  At 4 years old she already has all the yarn lingo down pat, best illustrated by: “Mummy, I can’t find XXX, can we look in your stash for it?”

The picture above is of my YarnMama haul from the amazing FleabubsByLala.  One of the constant sources of sadness to me is that I cannot use her beautiful hooks; the way I crochet means that I tend to drop hooks which have weighted handles. But her yarn is very special and I can indulge in that.  These skeins are almost too pretty to cake, and even my daughter gave a “Wow, THEY are beautiful!” when she opened the packet.  So these were able to comfort me as I put some of my stash up for sale last night to help to pay for the garage bill I earned the other day.  And the spaces created in my stash were filled by this new loveliness, that will be turned into something very special.  But I don’t think I will have the energy to cake them tonight.  I might have to squidge them one more time before I go upstairs though…

Self-medicating with yarn…

crochet

It has been one of those full-on weeks: lots of travel, lots to do and think about, limited time, and one or two moments when the only reasonable thing to do was to close the office door and indulge in some Anglo-Saxon vocabulary revision.  In amongst it all, as ever, there have been those random acts of humanity that remind me what it is really all about, and some perspective takes over.  Beautiful yellow roses from a work colleague left in my room were just what I needed to find today.

Tonight was the last Friday of the month, which is when YarnMama have their market night.  Now, I am supposed to be reducing my stash this year, but so far I am failing miserably because I am still buying yarn at about the same rate that I am using it. Also, when I am stressed I self-medicate with beautiful yarn. I know this because this week I really found myself hankering for a yarn-y package to be waiting for me when I got home from work.  So I got a bit carried away tonight and bought a bit too much nice yarn to be entirely justifiable.  But it was so pretty, and I was so tired, and the idea of all the fabulous things I could make with it was a bit too much.  I was weak.  Don’t judge me, wait until you see it (I will post pics when it arrives).

Anyway, in amongst the yellow roses, you can see the fabulous purple and turquoise yarn I bought last month at YarnMama.  Its a Dye Candy one, so that means that the colours are fabulous and vibrant. I need to come up with something a bit special for that one, so I am having a think. In the meantime I am playing with an equally eye-popping Dye Candy grad which I am going to make into a beaded scarf-thingie (stop me if I get too technical).

photo 22

Anyway, in other news my notebook is quickly filling up with lists of things for me to have a go at designing at some point this year.  Let me know if there is something you want to add to my list!

A quiet day in…

crochet, Shawls

So today is a rare treat – I have been able to book a day off from work to concentrate on getting some yarn-related jobs done, and I am ignoring all the essential house-related work I should also be attending to.  I do feel a bit like I have to ‘earn’ my yarn time by doing lots of other stuff first, but today I can indulge.  I am really excited because I finally have a logo for my blog and patterns (what do you think of it?) and as a result I have spent this morning finishing off some of my patterns ready to go live in April.  So much seems to be coming together at the moment, including a design for a shawl which I can’t show you yet but I am really pleased with.  It is a big yarn-y hug for someone who has both inspired and helped me, and I wanted it to be something special.  I made it over the last two days in DK, and now I am going to do it in sock-weight yarn to see how much yarn I need for a lightweight version.  The picture above is the yarn from my stash I am going to use.  Its by Pollyorange and called ‘The cold side of the pillow’.  I have been saving it for something special and I hope that there will be enough to finish the pattern.  I will cake it later and make a start.  Its going to be part of something very special that I hope to share with you very soon!

I have really been enjoying the reaction I have had to the post on beading, and I am so pleased people have found it useful.  Eventually I will treat myself to a camera with a video function so I can make some video tutorials to go with that post and to show you some other techniques I use.  The thing about crochet is that everyone seems to have their own quirky ways of doing things, and its nice to see them and compare. It really does build your confidence when you realise that it doesn’t matter how you hold your hook, join your yarn, sew your ends in, sew garments up, and so on, as long as you are happy with it and the end product works.  I am far from a purist, and I do things in all different ways.  So I am going to add a ‘techniques’ section to this blog so you can find those sorts of posts more easily.  And thank you all for your interest and lovely comments so far.

Starting to gain momentum.

crochet, Uncategorized

The last few days have been great as this experiment continues.  The hand warmer pattern that I put on Ravelry has received good interest and steady downloads from a (surprising) range of countries and I couldn’t have hoped for more.  I will try to write a hat pattern too and pop that up as another freebie soon.  But tonight I have finally typed up the Moo-Ra dress pattern and I am going to test it, along with a friend who has a daughter about the same age as my own.  I have been quite buoyed by the number of hits the photograph of that dress has had since the blog started.  Tonight I went to fetch the skein of pima cotton I was going to use for it, only to find that its DK and therefore I wouldn’t have enough yarn for the skirt.  So I have found some unused red bamboo yarn that I can use for the top section, and I am going to use the blue, purple and red yarn pictured above for the skirt.  Both of those are from Lollipop Guild Yarns, and they work well with red and plum coloured mini-skeins I had in my stash from Rosie’s Moments.  Even though the yarns are a bit of a mix and match, I think they will work well and I love the colours.  Next time you see them, should be on the final version of the pattern, all being well.