Hooking a rainbow

I have a thing about rainbows and the harmoniousness (is that a word?) of the colour wheel. I love how the colours merge in different proportions to give us so many different colours and shades and tones. If somebody places a colour in the wrong position it makes me itch. If I’m handed a pile of brightly coloured objects I’ll order them in colour spectrum order often without realising. I have Compulsive Rainbow Order.

I also love the symbolism of rainbows – they are full of hope and promise and joy. And I love coming up with and crocheting rainbow colour schemes.

Here are some of my favourite rainbow projects.

This is my baby rainbow colour palette.

I loved making this blanket for my friend’s baby girl. I was inspired by some circle in square babette blankets that a couple of friends had made but as I had not been crocheting very long I was a bit overwhelmed with the mathematics of joining different sized squares so I decided to go with equally sized squares instead. I chose stylecraft special dk yarn because for an acrylic yarn it is really lovely to crochet with, it’s washable at 40C, and the range of colours were great. Though at the time of crocheting the green and orange palette were a bit more limited. If I were to do this now I think I would swap the spring green for pistachio though I think I would keep the apricot/shrimp combo. I used a 4mm hook.

This is my pattern for my Squaring the Circle Square (in UK terms). I’m not saying I invented it as the circle increase is standard but I was very proud of myself for working out how to square the circle and I tried lots of stitch combinations before I was happy with round 4.

Rd1: Colour A. In a magic circle or ch4 ring – ch-3, 15 tr (16 stitches)

Rd2: Colour B. 2tr into each stitch (32 stitches)

Rd3: Colour C. 2 tr in first stitch, 1 tr in next and repeat pattern around the circle (48 stitches)

Rd4: Colour A. Into each stitch from previous round work a stitch: tr, htr, htr, dc, dc, dc, dc, dc, htr, htr, tr. The next stitch is a corner, into this stitch work [tr, dtr, ch2, dtr, tr]. Repeat this 3 times. (60 stitches, 15 on each side, not including the ch-2 spaces in the corners)

Rd5: Tr in each stitch, in ch-2 space work [2tr, ch2, 2tr]. (76 stitches, 19 on each side, not including the ch-2 spaces in the corners)

At the end of rd 5 my square measures 11cm or almost 4.5”

I used a continuous join as you go method to join my squares together based on this Baby Love Brand tutorial.  I  found her tutorial and links really easy to follow and I love this way of joining granny squares when you want quite a solid looking fabric.

I love the colours and texture in these rainbow bright blankets.

The ripple was made for my nephew and the wave was made for his cousin. Almost matching blankets for two beautiful boys. I used both the wave and the ripple patterns from this book and though I loved how the ripple pattern worked up I was losing the will to crochet by the end so this is probably the only ripple blanket I will ever make. Rippling is not for me!

Just looking at the joyful rainbow-ness of these pictures makes me smile and leads me quite nicely onto a small tadaaaa moment…yes the vintage rainbow stripy bag is now finished!

The pattern is the Attic24 Crochet Bag and the flowers are the  Crochet Flowers and Leaves  pattern.  Just look at how adorable the flowers are. I used the same colour to make the centre and the first set of petals before changing and doing the smaller petals in a contrasting colour. I love how well it’s worked out. I really love the simple flower shape on this bag so didn’t add the leaves.

I cannot wait to take my beautiful bag on its first trip to evening crochet club on Friday and have packed up one of my current WiPs ready to go.

Everything fits canny.

And I mean EVERYTHING…phew!