crochet baby blanket Archives

A New Crochet Blanket. Circles in Squares.

May 24, 2016May 24, 2016blanket, crochet17 Comments

I finished this little crochet blanket about a month ago. It now belongs to a baby. It is not my baby but a new cousin for my boys. I’m pleased that she has already had snuggles in her lovely new blanket.

A Circles in Squares blanket!

I chose to make the blanket with Scheepjes. I really wanted to get my mitts on this brand. A couple of months ago it seemed like loads of people were using it and I wanted to join the fun. I liked all the colours and I wanted something super soft so I went with the merino (which also has microfibre in it). It is the softest, squishiest yarn. It is also quite splitty, which surprised me. I find that once I get into a crochet rhythm I can avoid most of the splittiness, whichever kind of yarn it is. However, it’s still disappointing when it happens.

When I heard that there was to be a new human on the horizon, I asked my sister-in-law what sort of thing she fancied. I knew I wanted to make a blanket but I didn’t want to make one that wouldn’t fit in with her tastes. All that effort and they don’t like it? No thanks. She gave me a photo of a cushion that fitted with the nursery colour scheme. The cushion had a bunch of bright circles on it . That was enough inspiration for me; off I went.

I blocked it (badly). It didn’t work. They all pinged back after 5 minutes. I thought they’d be good because of the merino but I’m guessing microfibre does funny things.

These squares were about as flat as they got and they quickly started to curl at the edges again. Oh well.

Each time I make a blanket I have great fun laying them all out. Once I have more than a few squares I do it over and over, each time adding a handful more of newly stitched squares. I think I had another row to go at this point but couldn’t wait to see what was going on.

I had to be boring with the construction. I had next to no grey wool left. I sewed the squares together with a whip stitch as I reckoned this wouldn’t use as much of the remaining yarn. I also stuck to a very plain border. I jumped online to try and order another ball or two but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Sold out! So the border had to remain plain. In an attempt to add some interest a couple of rows were back loop only. Thinking about it now, I could’ve done some FP and BP stitches or something. Not that that would have been much better. I wanted to have a proper, fancypants border. 🙁

I got one ball of each colour for the circles and thought six would be enough for the main colour. Eight balls. Eight balls next time.

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to take new and interesting pictures of blankets. They all end up draped on the same two chairs in the same locations!

I can tell you that I never spot wires, plug sockets and other such things in Pinterest pictures. They jump out a mile in all my photo’s no matter how hard I try to avoid them. Photoshop! We used to have a very early version of photoshop (not that I knew how to use it) on the old mac but the mac choked to death on carpet fluff. Be mindful of computers when getting new carpet!

I made up the pattern although I know many similar ones exist. I’m afraid to say I have not written it down yet. I took photographs of all the making stages but I actually don’t like them! I can do better. Sooo at some point in the near future, I will come back with a post about how I made the squares. I did some experimenting with starting the rows as I wasn’t happy with a messy 3 chain start. I think it’d be interesting to do some comparisons etc but it’ll have to wait until another day.

Anyway, I must go and wake up the little one, he fell asleep in the car on the way home from food shopping. He didn’t even wake up when I moved him to the sofa. Silly boy has been up since 5.40am.

I’ve linked up with Crafting is my Therapy. A place for sharing crafting blog posts!

A Super Quick Granny Square Blanket.

January 18, 2016January 18, 2016blanket, crochet23 Comments

This is my Itchy Fingers blanket. Between more purposeful projects I still want to have something on the go otherwise I get itchy fingers. Also, I want to experiment with what I’ve got and see if clashy colours go together, stuff like that.

I’ve got a ridiculous amount of Stylecraft Special hidden in the cupboard under the stairs. I am determined to get this down to whatever might be seen as an acceptable minimum. Just enough so I don’t get totally embarrassed when people see the mounds of yarn stuffed in that small space.

I’ve no idea why I had half these colours. Some of them are particularly lurid. Or maybe it’s just the specific combo I’ve forced them into. Denim and Plum look lovely most of the time but I have managed to recreate the colour palette of a 1970’s vomitty shag pile. Actually, I quite like it.

I turned it at each round to stop the twist. I am not sure how I feel about mixing wrong sides with right. I am quite discriminating about the wrong side of crochet being on display but people who don’t crochet don’t seem to notice that there are right/wrong sides. I guess I should let that particular misgiving go. It didn’t look so bad.

The full list of colours, should you wish to make it (not sure why you would) are as follows:

Pomegrante, Aspen, Spice, Denim, Apricot, Plum and Gold.

It has gone back in the cupboard under the stairs where it takes up more room than the yarn did.

Next up is a basic granny triangle shawl. I finished it on Friday but I need to sort out the pattern and write it down. It is super duper warm in this freezing weather. This morning I woke up to a flurry of”likes” on Instagram for the finished article. Brought a smile to my tired 5.40am face.

I made stuff pre-blog too; pretending to be a crafting blogger. When you’re not. Yet.

October 23, 2015blanket, crafty, crochet, felt, sewing17 Comments

I’ve spent years being inspired by other bloggers work. It became something I really wanted to do too. It looked fun and it looked like a good way to keep on track of what I was doing creatively. I was lazy and procrastinatey and used several excellent excuses as to why I hadn’t just done it. I’m still so new to it all, but if I had started when I first I had the notion then I would have been being bloggy for six or seven years by now! In my head, I have been doing it for six years or seven years. I’ve spent much time taking pictures of crafty projects and each time I’ve thought that maybe they would end up as a blog post. So, I’m going to put up some pictures of work that was done in the six months prior to hitting Publish for the first time. (I was going to write a post about yeasterday’s [relevant unwitting typo, that applies] kitchen endeavours but that was such a disaster that I need a few days to recover :/).

I went through a mandala phase. These two are both Made in K Town using Rico Creative Cotton. Cheap cotton, very splitty, lovely colours. This has led me towards doilies, which I still need to make more of. Soon.

I made my eldest boy an Attic 24 Ripple for his bed. It’s Stylecraft Special. Everyone loves a bit of Stylecraft rippling.

The boy chose the colours. So off I went. It was reasonably speedy once the first few rows were out the way. A repeating colour pattern was a weeny bit boring though. Next time, it’s random colours, like it’s supposed to be.

I made teeny niece the mini version for her dolly. I didn’t use the same pattern. This version has more ripples so looks better scaled down. It’s actually adapted from a cushion cover pattern from Cute and Easy Crochet by Nicki Trench. When I say “adapted” I mean “added a few more rows”. The edging, I think is the one that was on the Granny Stripe made by Lucy at Attic 24.

This one was a special request for a baby blanket. My Sister in Law chose the colours. It’s Stylecraft alpaca DK. The blocks were from 200 Crochet Blocks by Jan Eaton. Don’t go thinking that all the blocks end with the same stitch count though. They really don’t. Hmm. I really liked how this one turned out but I only blocked the edge (which is from Edie Eckman’s Crochet Borders book) and not the individual squares. Next time, I will try super hard to block stuff.

One of the quickest little blankets ever. It was so much fun. The squares were done in a few days and it was the first time I used a continuous-join-as you-go. This was for a baby girl born in early spring. I’d make one of these again for sure. It was inspired by a picture I saw on Pinterest and it led me to Katie’s Kitchen.

There are six handmade things in the picture above. Six! I am responsible for five of them but the cream knitted blanket is a Mother in Law job. Three blankets, two cushions and a dolly. Huzzah.

Sewing has been worked on too. I’m better than I was but there is definitely room for improvement too. Having said that, the cherry blossom needlecase is one of my favourite felty sewn things I’ve done.

And a Mermaid’s purse! Well, another needlecase… She was lovely to make. After Christmas I plan on making more of these sorts of things and giving them a go on Etsy. I’m not entirely sure what the demand is for needlecases and such, I guess I’ll find out. I will obviously shout very loudly on here if these sorts of things head towards my Etsy shop.

Phew, I feel a bit better now. I’m off to have yesterdays’ leftovers for lunch, which thankfully, taste better than the experience that I had in the kitchen.

Sewing curtains, re-homing a crochet blanket and enjoying summer.

July 23, 2015July 23, 2015blanket, crochet, flowers, garden, outside, sewing6 Comments

Last week I said I wasn’t allowed to buy any more fabric…. I have….

Half a tonne of it. Lots of it. Loads. I’m making curtains, it’s totally legit. When I said I wasn’t allowed to buy any more fabric I had forgotten that I’d planned new curtains. It was not an impulse purchase but a careful, well thought out one. I started on the first curtain the other night but was scuppered by having bought the wrong header tape. I blame IKEA, I don’t think they do the normal header tape anymore and it wasn’t for normal curtains, it was weird. Anyway, by the time the replacement stuff we ordered from Ebay turns up, I’ll have hopefully sorted out all of the other curtains ready for the tape. I can’t wait to have new curtains!

I got a request from a friend on Monday night asking if I had a spare baby blanket they could have to give as a present for someone. Actually, I had three from leftover experiments. This is the one they chose. Unfortunately, it wasn’t actually finished. Thankfully I’d sewn in the ends already. However, it had no border so I had to quickly whizz around it a few times and find a pretty edge that would suit a baby girl. This is the blanket.

It was initially going to be for a baby I knew but once I’d almost finished, I decided it wouldn’t suit said baby and stored it away with all the other abandoned projects. Poor blanket. Luckily, someone else saw the potential in it and asked if they could have it. Yes. Good.

There isn’t a pattern for it, it’s just a basic granny stripe mixed in with a variety of doubles, half trebles and trebles in a random order. I used Stylecraft Special DK. I quite liked it once it had its border added. The border was inspired by various different patterns I’ve seen around. It’s a bit hotchpotch.

The garden is getting pretty again after its June lull. It makes me ponder what I need to do for next year, to ensure I have colour in more places. I’ve noticed that the greenfly have come to party on my Sweet Peas.

My six year old and I went outside this morning and snipped all the Sweet Peas and some Lavender to make posies for his teachers. It’s the last day of school today. I shook off the greenfly before he handed them over.

There is loads of Borage in the herb bed, I didn’t realise it was such a prolific self seeder. There are so many plants. It’s managed to travel to some other parts of the garden too. I’m going to have to keep on top of that.

The bees flipping love it. It would make me feel guilty if I took too much of it out. I’m going to have to keep it to one part of the garden but still make sure the bees have enough to keep their tummies full.

Bees are also having a great time in the Nasturtiums. I’ve spotted more bumble bees here as opposed to the honey bees on the Borage. I don’t know any other type of bees. I could well be mixing my bees.

I’ll soon be running the risk of repeating myself with the garden pics. I’ll need to look at past blog posts to remind myself of my blatherings.

Here, another one of Borage! I put them in ice cubes last year. Looked absolutely nothing like those pictures you see on Pinterest.