When life gives you (a garden full of) mint…make mojitos.

 

I have been neglectful lately.  Of my blog and of crocheting in general.  I have lost my crojo!  I hope to regain it soon but suspect it can be found somewhere in mid-September when both boys are in school.

However before my creativity went on its Summer-long vacation I did have a creative surge and I actually had a go at writing a crochet pattern, which was inspired by an invitation to a friend’s greenhouse-warming party and a little cocktail I knocked up in honour of the occasion.

For me the colour of spring is GREEN.  I love to see my garden waking up after its winter sleep. Tiny buds emerge on the fruit trees, the grass looks less muddy and more zingy, the pine woods surrounding my village look less ominous and more inviting in the spring sunshine than the winter grey.  So my cocktail was inspired by GREEN, not least because the mint was rampaging below my rose bushes and apple tree, and because I was celebrating a greenhouse.

Behold the Greenhouse Fizz:

It’s my take on a mojito style gin cocktail and incorporates the late spring and early summer flavours of elderflower and mint.  And there’s also some lime in there because…GREEN!

Of course what every greenhouse needs, apart from a floor that has been well and truly christened with a sprinkling of elderflower, gin and soda water, is something that will remain after the party buzz has disappeared, and will hopefully provide a bit of colour in those dormant winter months so for a gift that would last longer than the cocktail I designed some bunting inspired by the lime and elderflower in my cocktail.

And here it is, hanging in my own greenhouse before going to its new home.

I’ve had a go at writing down the pattern and the following pdf includes the cocktail, the bunting pattern, and a photo tutorial for the bunting.  If you have a go and find any errors please let me know.  If you have any questions please ask.  Hopefully the pattern is easy to follow, and if it isn’t then the photo tutorial will help.

greenhousefizz

Cheers!

The Crochiating Crow’s Guide to Getting Started

Why did you learn to crochet?

I began crocheting in August 2013. Two things motivated me to learn.

I saw a Sophie Digard bag made of hundreds of the cutest puffed flowers in the most delicate of colours and someone told me it was crochet. It blew my mind that THAT was crochet! Back when I was younger my Great Aunt Kitty had a Granny Square Blanket on the back of her sofa. The way I remember it, it smelled of coal fires and smoke and stale old people smell and a home well lived in. In my head a traditional Granny Square blanket reminiscent of the nineteen seventies was crochet. Of course, having never crocheted before, I firmly believed that a Sophie Digard style bag would be well within my capabilities once I’d learnt. How I laugh about that now.

The second thing was this pattern for an owl in a granny square that was doing the rounds on pinterest.  I had a yearning to make my beautiful niece something owl-y and crocheted, preferably for her upcoming 3^rd birthday.

Plan A was to ask my aunt to teach me. We arranged a date but unfortunate circumstances meant we couldn’t do it as planned but I was psyched. When I mentioned on facebook that I was keen to learn, a lovely friend sent me a link to a youtube video that she had followed when she was getting started, and as I had a hook and some yarn I decided to give it a go.

I was not very good. There was much pausing and rewinding of the video. There was even more frogging (pulling out the stitches) of my work. But by the end of the evening I had produced what I can only describe as a rag. It is fondly known as the dish cloth. I still have it. I posted every step of my evening on facebook, which resulted in the two events that have made me the hooker I am today.

Firstly my aunt took pity on me and made sure I had a face to face lesson by the end of the week. Secondly, I found out that a group of my friends could knit and crochet very well and there were some others that were keen on learning so a facebook group was formed. And these lovely people became my go to people when I wanted help understanding patterns, or was struggling with the difference between dk and 4 ply, or needed recommendations for patterns, tutorials and yarn.

Here is my first tadaa moment.  A dolly blanket for my niece’s birthday (only a couple of days late), with Alfie Bear modelling the dishcloth.  The wine glass is purely for scale.

I did eventually make her something owlish too

Meet Pinky the Owl.  Pinky is a vaguely owl shaped cushion from Issue 57 of Let’s Get Crafting: Knit and Crochet magazine.

 

So my advice for those wanting to learn how to crochet is this:

Ask a friend who can, to help you. It is amazing how much easier I found it to follow a real life person rather than a video.

Get yourself a crochet community where you can feel comfortable asking questions and for advice, where you can share projects and craft related chit chat. This can be online or in real life. There are some great facebook crochet groups about and they mostly seem full of people who are eager to help each other and share ideas. Instagram is a great source of inspiration. Search a crochet related hashtag and take it from there.

Ask at your lovely local wool shop if they have a knit and natter group. Some have general wooly craft groups, some have special groups just for crocheters. Ask your friends – you never know, you might have a hooking network right on your doorstep.

Join Ravelry.

There are some brilliant blogs and websites about. Here is my list of helpful sites for a crochet newbie:

Attic24  – Lucy’s blog is a rather delightful view of her Yorkshire life. There are beautiful photos of her day to day life, the occasional recipe, and loads and loads of inspirational crochet. I love her very easy to understand patterns and photo step by step guides. An attic 24 ripple or stripy bag or granny stripe blanket seems to be a crocheting rite of passage. She uses UK terminology.

Little Tin Bird– very similar to Lucy Attic . Her free crochet tutorials are great, with brilliant photo guides to basic granny squares, solid grannies and circles in squares. She also uses UK terminology.

Crafty Minx Crochet School – this is an American site and uses US terminology which can be quite confusing when you’re just beginning and are used to UK terms but it wasn’t until I watched the first few crochet school vids that I actually understood how stitches were made, and which part I was meant to be working in.

Bella Coco – I didn’t find youtube videos particularly helpful and was quite overwhelmed by the sheer number of them when I was starting out almost three years ago. I was easily confused by the similarities and differences of the UK and US names for things. The Bella Coco tutorials use UK terms and lots of my friends have found them very helpful.

Get a book with life sized photographs and really clearly written instructions.  The Dorling Kindersley Crochet Guides are great though I have found that even though they have different titles the content is pretty much the same.  I had this one when I first started.  I think it cost me £4 in aldi.  The Works often stock the DK crochet books and you can get them from the book people too.

I hope these links help a little if you are thinking of learning.  If you know of any sites, books or magazines that really helped you ‘get it’ please let me know and I can add them to my list.

WiP watch – the Moogly CAL 2014

Just before Christmas I received an unexpected lovely gift from a fabulous friend. She had seen this notebook and thought of me, my love of organisational stationery, and my vast WiP collection.

When I started filling it in with my unfinished projects I must admit to becoming slightly embarrassed by the sheer number of works in progress (WiPs) that I have.  And these are the projects that I have actually started, not the ones in my head that are buzzing about, desperate to be released. Part of my motivation for starting the blog was to try and get my WiPs in check. There are currently nine outstanding projects and one completed one, and I suspect WiP watch may be a regular feature as I try and whittle that number down.

I had decided that I was not going to start another blanket until I’ve finished one of the blankets on my list, so with that in mind I have been working on and off on my Moogly blanket since January. I began this project in January 2014. I hadn’t been crocheting very long and had decided to attempt to make a Granny Square a day, which would be put together to make up a magic blanket (first item on my WiP list). When some friends told me about a mystery crochet along (CAL) based on different designs I thought it would be a great way to improve my crochet skills. I loved the idea of a new square being released every fortnight and thought it would tie in quite well with my square a day project.

I will always remember the energy I put into choosing my yarn – I knew I wanted something soft and snuggly and quite luxurious feeling but it needed to be washable. I ordered five balls of Drops Big Merino in red, beige, orange, maroon and mocha, having no clue at all as to how much I would need to make a blanket.

HOW MUCH yarn do you need to make a blanket! I’m still surprised that I had to really stretch it to get three blocks out of those five balls, but by the end of those blocks I was in love with the wool, learning lots and really committed to the fortnightly schedule. So I bought a LOT of wool. Then we decided try and sell our house so the wool all got packed away while the house went on the market. Then when we sold but hadn’t found our new home yet we moved into a temporary home and the project was relegated to time out. So that’s my big excuse for why my beautiful blanket is still very much a work in progress.

This winter my thoughts turned towards my big box of very snuggly, warm, beautiful wool and I woke up my Moogly CAL from hibernation and, when time allows,  I have been working on the blocks.

There were eight and a bit blocks when I started in January and last night I began the 24^th, and final, block of the  CAL. When the blocks were all released they were free but some of them are now paid for patterns so I was very pleased I had downloaded the patterns and added them to my Ravelry library as they were released. There are some great alternative squares suggested if you don’t want to pay for a block or don’t really love a particular square. When I look at some of the squares I’ve made I am quite amazed with myself. I have learnt such a lot from this CAL.

Block 12 has been my favourite square. I didn’t think I would really like it before I started making it, and it took me about an hour to get the first four rounds right.  However I found that I absolutely loved how it came together, and I adore the look and texture of the finished block.

I am so very nearly finished the making of the squares that my thoughts are turning towards blocking (should have done it as I went along) and ordering more wool for the joining. I love joining squares to make a blanket or cushion or scarf – I love seeing how it all comes together – and hopefully I will be able to share a grand tadaa moment soon. Just watch this space…

 

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!

The Call of the WiP – or the colours made me do it!

I have a problem. I am a chronic starter. I’m very good at it. I have ten lovely crochet projects that I have written in my crochet project book. I have only finished two of them. And when I say finished I mean I’ve sort of finished one for now but I know I want to add something else to it later. The completely finished one is something I made in collaboration with an amazing crochet group that I’m part of and I’ll tell you all about that some other time. I am hoping that by blogging about my WiPs (work in progress) it will help focus me to finish them.

You see I get entranced by a stitch pattern, or the excitement of a CAL (crochet along), or some wonderful new yarn, or (most frequently) a colour combination I need to try, and it was the colours that made me start the Attic 24 stripy bag last week. I needed to make something in this vintage rainbow palette I’d dreamed up.

I’ve used stylecraft special dk in claret, tomato, mustard (oh I am in love with this mustard colour at the moment), cypress, storm blue and violet, on a 3mm hook and so far I’ve not deviated from Lucy Attic’s pattern. The parchment I’ve used to help the colours sing has meant that 14 rounds were the perfect number for the bag base and I’m currently working on the sides, though I intend to do 26 rounds instead of her suggested 24 before starting that lovely scalloped top. Because I’m using dk and a smaller hook I’m hoping that my bag will be big enough to hold some yarn, my fab planning book, and a bottle of wine for the next time I go to evening crochet club. I am best when working with a deadline so this bag needs to be finished by a week tomorrow so I can take it out and try it out for size. (Please let the wine fit, please let the wine fit.)  Hopefully I will make it…