WIP Wednesday

Only a couple of things in progress this week that I can post about here...

I finally managed to get enough decent light to photograph the progress on my ripple blanket:

I started my Elise Shawl:

And finished off February on my OUAT sampler:

In which I am incapable of self-restraint...

...at least, I am when it comes to shiny new yarn!! Though in my (somewhat patchy) defense, most of it was purchased with a definite project in mind! 

My new-found obsession is indie yarns! I think it started when I was reading Stitched Together's Blog and saw her lovely pictures of hand dyed and hand spun yarns. While I realise that I don't have the time to learn another new craft (no matter how wonderful spinning my own yarn sounds), it's much easier to buy a few very nice new yarns and to support independent crafters.

It's also, of course, more expensive *cough*

Anyway, off I wandered to various links and to Etsy, and back I came eventually with my bank account several pounds lighter and several very nice parcels due to arrive over a week or two!

These are the lovely, squishy, shiny, gorgeously yarns that have arrived so far! 

Anyway, the first two to arrive were Babylonglegs semi-solid sock yarns, which are 3-ply 100% merino in the "Pie" and "Feel the Teal" colourways:

If I'm honest, these give me ever so slightly mixed feelings: they're both wonderfully soft, really rather pretty and I do love them... but they look much brighter in pictures than in real life. I've discovered similar problems with some of the others looking more green in person than in pictures, though I suspect that might just be the way my eyes work - everyone sees colours differently after all.

These are the only one's I bought with no real project in mind, although considering how soft they feel I think at least one of them will have to become a scarf... maybe both of them in a houndstooth pattern since they're both blue based.

The second yummy parcel I got to open (seriously, Wednesday was like my birthday considering the number of exciting parcels I got to open) was from Jelliebean Yarns on Etsy - the Stardust Sock Yarn in the Peacocks colourway. This is 75% merino, 20% nylon and 5% brilliantly sparkly silver thread. 

This was bought for my current on-the-go small-ish project - the Elise Shawl. This has been in my queue for ages, I've just been debating over a suitable yarn to use. It was a little hard to photograph - mostly because it started raining as I was taking pictures of stuff, but also because this is going to need pretty heavy blocking once it's finished.  

The final parcel that arrived the other day was this scrummy yarn from Artist's Palette Yarns.

This is the Smoothie Sock yarn in the "Walk in the Downs" colourway - it's 75% merino and 25% nylon, and is a wonderful mass of greens, yellows and blues. This is actually intended for socks!! Since my knitting is laughable I've been hunting through crochet patterns, and this is the one I've singled out so far... though it may change at some point before I start.

All of my stash yarns and my planned projects are linked through my Ravelry profile... and there will no doubt be another gleeful post like this when my other parcels arrive!

FO Friday

Inspired by Tami again, here's a couple of projects I finished this week...

I finally finished my Gingham inspired cushion. Took a little longer than expected, mostly because I headed over to my parents' for a few days and got distracted by other things!

I simply joined the front to the back with a round of single crochet and then added a quick shell pattern to the edge. The buttons came with a copy of Mollie Makes and I added some loops of chain stitch to hold everything closed - this is the one part I'm not sure of and might end up unpicking and changing around. 

Overall, for a first attempt at crocheting both the front and the back in different patterns, I'm quite pleased! It's not perfect, but I know what to improve on my next attempt... namely making sure I've got the same number of stitches on both the front and the back!!

The other thing I finished off this weekend was a small crochet frame. I've had the frame itself made for a couple of months, but I wasn't completely sure what to do with it. Then inspiration struck... of course it did so at about 10.15 at night, and it had to be done there and then, no putting it off until a more sensible time the following evening! And so, a small crochet flower, some rusty embroidery skills, a few buttons and some gold thread later, I ended up with this...

I kinda like it! I'd probably go for a more neutral fabric pattern next time, as it's a little busy for the background, and I'm not happy with the placement of the red flower, but for a spur of the moment attempt, I'm kinda happy with it!

Cross Stitch Craziness

I may have been tempted to pick up a needle and thread again... the project is totally adorable though.

Image from Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery 

It's a monthly subscription, so while I have January and February to keep me busy (along with March's coming tomorrow), it's not going to eat up all of my crafting time! The pattern you receive is wonderfully detailed, and much much better quality all around than some of the (very expensive) cross stitch kits I've bought in the past, and comes complete with yarn options and details for people that might be new to cross stitch. Its so nice that I'm considering some of their other patterns!

Not like I needed another WIP or anything *facepalms*

WIP Wednesday

So... inspired by Tami, here are my current works in progress.

I like to have a large project and a couple of smaller projects on the go at the same time - sometimes it's nice to have something you can see the end of rather than a seemingly endless project such as a blanket.

My current quick gratification project is a gingham inspired cushion, with the front worked in 4-round solid granny squares and the back worked in simple stripes of treble stitches. It's made in my favourite so-good-for-a-low-price yarn - Stylecraft DK. I'll happily splash out for more expensive yarns for some projects, but considering my cushions suffer a fair amount of wear and tear, I want something that will wash fairly easily and isn't going to make me cry if I need to replace it.

My large on-the-go project is a ripple blanket, working from the neat ripple pattern by Lucy at Attic 24. It's a lovely pattern, easy to pick up once you get past the small amount of math at the beginning. It's a nice repetitive pattern to loose yourself in while sitting in front of the TV.

There are a couple of colour progressions not shown here - the light has been awful the past week or two (too much grey, rainy weather), meaning I've not had chance to get an updated photo. 

I've not planned the colours in advance on this project, meaning that there's been a couple of stalls in my progress as I've not been completely sure of a colour choice. When that happens I generally put a stitch marker in at the end of the row and leave the blanket where I can see it for a few days... at the end of that time I've generally decided that I like it, in which case I finish off the row, or I hate it, in which case it's easy to frog it!

I think I'm about halfway through the main portion of the blanket - I'm aiming for it to fit a single bed, that way it's also a good size to drape over the bottom of a double bed or for snuggling under on the sofa. When I'm a little further through I'll start brainstorming edging ideas.

I've other, smaller things on the planning list for when the gingham cushion is finished (this week, hopefully) and another blanket in the planning stages for a Christmas present - considering how slowly I work, I'll need to start soon to be finished in time for this Christmas!! 

Planning and Inspirations - part 1

For my first blanket I started with very little prior planning - I knew what yarn I wanted to use, and I had a basic stitch pattern that I loved and I threw myself straight into it. And generally, apart from a couple of frogging events, its going pretty well; I like the random way the colours work and it's fun stopping every now and then to plan the next few rows... really I just love plonking down random colours next to my most recent row and trying ever weirder choices.

And, while I've got a few very nice blanket patterns in my Ravelry favourites, I wasn't actually intending on starting another blanket until my current one is finished. Then my brother's fiancee made a comment about buying new soft furnishings for their flat, and an idea took hold...

They're both pretty easy to buy presents for individually, but are a moderate pain to buy joint presents for - so I figured I'd make them a nice blanket... even better since she's always cold and wearing multiple jumpers etc. I also figured that since I work slowly, if I start making it now, it should (hopefully) be ready in time for Christmas.

I knew more or less what colour scheme I wanted - their living room is mostly neutrals, so I wanted colours to fit that, with a couple of deeper reds or maybe purples for contrast.

My first port of call was Design Seeds. And after spending a quite frankly ridiculous amount of time browsing through things, I picked a few that were close to what I wanted - none of them were exact, but between them, they gave me a good idea of what I wanted and, more importantly, how they would work together.

Clockwise from left these are Winter Hues, Puppy Tones and Bicycle Tones.

Seriously though, Design Seeds should probably come with some sort of warning - just like TV Tropes or Wikipedia's random page feature, it's very easy to loose several hours of your day just browsing through the website... that and you come away with more ideas for colour schemes than you have time to work on!!

My next stop was comparing these colours to those available in the Stylecraft Special DK, giving me the following colour selection:

There's a couple of additions I may make (white and the new gold that was recently released), but overall I'm happy with it as a starting point for a blanket.

A week of firsts

A very first blog post... well, actually it's my second, but the first was posted a few years ago and then life got in the way, so there was never a second post.

A first collage of crochet projects... only one of which is currently finished. I try not to have too many WIP's at one time, but there are a few on the go at the moment. The bottom right is my beloved ripple blanket, which is on hold at the moment as I'm still debating the latest colour choice - it will either be continued once the current cushion cover is done, or that colour will be frogged to see if that aids inspiration

The view from my office block at the university... with what has become the default weather setting of recent weeks - i.e. grey and wet! This was taken last week, so it's a little quiet - the undergrads are officially back this week, so it's much busier and noisier... much to the disappointment of us postgrads!!

First loaf of home-made bread!! (Inspired by this recipe)

A new project or two to come - I've been crocheting for over a year (and crafting for as long as I can remember) and have finally decided that I need to learn how to knit... it might not go anywhere, but I feel I ought to have a go. Failing which I'll fall back on the Tunisian crochet!