Crocheted Secret

Pretty cotton/acrylic yarn for my new project (Sirdar Calico).

But I can't show you what I'm making 'cos it's a secret.

Shhhhhhh!

Granny in the Garden

My New Year's resolution to make pretty things for me rather than to sell is going well.

I started making these crocheted Summer Garden Granny Squares over the festive break (see Lucy's lovely blog over at Attic24 for the pattern).

I used some acrylic yarn that I had in my stash - yarn that came with each issue of The Art of Crochet partwork that I collected last year. I never got past the first binder as I was quite disappointed in the number of designs for the price of each week's issue. Anyway, I had enough balls of yarn to make 49 squares (a nice size for a cosy lap cover). Nine colours were used, though I had more balls of certain colours (mainly the blues) so they tend to dominate.

I wanted to make each square different so I wrote out a little chart where I could check off colours against their row position in the square. This ensured that I had a pretty much equal amounts of squares with a white border, or a red border, or a lime green border, etc.

I had great fun trying out different combinations of squares - making sure that no centre colours or edge colours were next to each other; and then of course colours such as the white shone out so they had to be moved around until they were more evenly spaced. And then I joined the rows together in the wrong order so things were slightly more random than intended - but it looked ok and so I didn't bother pulling it out!

I didn't have enough of the yarn left for the border so I'm hunting now for some similar tones. I've found a green yarn in my stash and used that for the first row of the edging but I need a shopping trip to get a couple more to finish it off!

It's such an easy pattern but the overall effect is lovely. Hopefully I'll post a FINISHED! photo soon, and I'll try and take a decent picture in daylight as these photos don't show the lovely bright colours very well.

What have you been making this month?

Baby Bunting Arrives in Oz

Regular readers may remember me mentioning some Baby Bunting that I was making for a friend of a friend - to give to her friend who had just had a baby girl. Well it's all finished now and hanging on a nursery wall in Sydney, Australia.

This is the lovely soft DK yarn that I started with, in delicate pastel shades to match the baby's nursery.

I knitted nine flags in all, in shades of light and mid pink with alternating white; with a crocheted edging around each flag in mint green. I then crocheted some letters for the baby's name - CECILIA - also in the mint green yarn; these were then stitched onto the relevant colour flag. The flags were then backed with white felt to secure the stitching further and to make each flag more robust, and then they were all attached together with some more crocheted cord, in the mid pink yarn.

And here's the final bunting hanging on my living room wall.

Angie, who commissioned the bunting, wrote me a lovely email once it had arrived two weeks later (not bad considering it was over the Christmas and New Year period). She thought that the bunting was '...absolutely fabulous. Honestly, it's even more gorgeous than I had expected and I know Ali is going to really love it. I can't wait to give it to her!'

It would be great to see a photo of the bunting in situ, but really I'm just so pleased that Angie loves it - and hopefully Ali and Cecilia will too. It's lovely to think that my work may be gracing the walls of Cecilia's bedroom in Australia for years to come.

Wow, what a great Saturday!

Wow, what a great Saturday I've had!

First good thing to happen to me today:
The postman delivered these gorgeous yarns to me this morning. I ordered them late on Thursday night from Wharfedale Woolworks on Folksy and they arrived in the post today. Great service!

The yarns are both lovely soft merino double knit, hand dyed in glorious colourways. The top skein is 'Ilkla Moor' and the bottom is 'Goldenacre'. Aren't they gorgeous? I don't know what to make with them yet, but I can't wait to get my hands/needles on them.

Second good thing to happen to me today:
I took part in the latest Folksy Destash Swap this week. For those of you who don't know, this involves looking through your stash of crafty stuff for things that you can part with, but you think someone else will be able to use. I think most crafters horde stuff, thinking 'that will be useful one day' but never getting round to actually doing anything with it! Destash swaps are great for this - you can pass on your stuff to someone else and hopefully receive other stuff in return that you can do something with.

This is the destash bundle that I put together for Annabella Designs. A shoebox full of fabric, ribbon, yarn, ribbon roses, sequins, beads and a little fabric heart that I made, and a couple of packs of seeds as I read on her blog that Annabella likes propagating plants. This is the first swap that I've done, so I wasn't sure how much, or what, to send.


Anyway, I was relieved to read Annabella's post on the Folksy Forum, she seems to be pleased with her destash swap selection:

Just to say a big thank you to BlissKnits for my swap which arrived this morning, delighted with my goodies will be blogging about them on the weekend..Thank you again to BlissKnits…Annabella xx

And this is the lovely bundle that I got today from Donna-Marie of D'z Jewells.


It's hard to see from the photo, but there was a really interesting selection of goodies: lots of beads of all shapes and sizes, buttons, drilled pieces of shell, mother of pearl discs and metallic charms that I can use for jewellery, or for embellishing bags and brooches; jewellery findings that are always useful; novelty bottle tops; 2 necklaces; metallic double pointed needles (must learn how to use them one day!); and an unusual gold coloured belt of fruit shapes (hard to visual, but I think a row of these will look great as a bag embellishment). There was also a fabric photo frame which I've given to my niece Sarah as she loves purple. My 3-year-old great niece Ellie took an instant shine to a little pink fabric teddy, so she was promised all the fabric teddies, rabbits and butterflies that were also in the box if she was good when we went out for lunch. She was very good!

Thanks Donna-Marie - you've certainly fired up my imagination!

Third good thing to happen to me today:
My mam took us out for a pub lunch today. The four of us (mam, niece, great niece and me) had a nice walk up to the pub; it was lovely and sunny, but REALLY windy. Sarah and Ellie had a play in the little park at the pub, and we all had a lovely lunch and chat; and then a nice walk back to mam's house for more reading (why to kids latch onto ONE book?) and playing with the destash goodies.

Fourth good thing to happen to me today:
My wonderful mam gave me TWO bunches of flowers for helping with the greenhouse erection. She couldn't decide whether to go for the pink/white colourway, or the autumnal shades, so she got both! Isn't she great?

Thanks mam! They look absolutely gorgeous!

So all in all, a VERY good day.