Granny square blanket Archives

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.

Lily’s Lilypad Fireplace Blanket.

October 14, 2015January 27, 2017blanket, crochet, free pattern17 Comments

At last I have finished! It has been an age. I got the wool in July, which to me seems like a loooong time ago. The first post I mentioned it in reminds me not to just click on auto edit when sorting out the photos because, crikey, those pictures need toning down. Hope I’ve improved since then. The next picture doesn’t count, it was taken indoors on a rainy day :/

These are the tiles which orginally inspired the colour choices (and a red rug that sits in front of the fire).

I used the Lily pad square from Pasta and Patchwork but I added extra chains between stitches for the first couple of rounds as my squares were not sitting flat. Indeed, they looked like strange nipples. They still don’t sit flat but they would with blocking. However, blocking things increases waiting time and I just want to see a blanket finished. I’m too impatient for it but this blanket would really benefit from blocking. Over time, it’ll sort itself out!

I used Drops Karisma for this project. It has alpaca in it and it’s super warm. It’s nice and hefty; has real cosiness. The colours are: light beige, olive, mint, light dusty pink, dark mustard, light grey green, chocolate brown, wine red and beige brown mix. I used 7 balls of light beige and two of each for the others. It’s an odd size: 6×9 which is slightly over long, or not quite wide enough, depending on which way you want to look at it. I actually planned for 7×7 but I didn’t want to have that much leftover yarn and I wasn’t sure it’d be that big. Unfortunately I was a square short to add another row of 7. I eeked it out with what I could and this was the formation that used the most squares.

I think the border suits it very well and I will use it for my next blanket (which I’ve already started!). The border has come from Around the Corner, Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman. It’s the last two rows of pattern 27. The corners are made up because I hadn’t laid the foundation stitches from the pattern (not enough yarn for that). I think it works beautifully well.

Hmm, I took quite a lot of pictures. I wanted to get them right though. Think I’ve done an OK job.

I’ve used a Continuous Join As You Go. I learned this method using a fabulous tutorial, it’s the clearest one I’ve found. I used two UK trebles in every other stitch, which is different from the cluster used in the tutorial but the principle is the same.

I’m properly pleased with this new blanket. I will be waving goodbye to it at the end of the month when I hand it over to my Sister in Law. A Lily pad blanket for Lily, or a Fireplace Blanket.

Next, I’m focussing on Halloween decorations, hopefully there will be a post about that and I’m also working on a new pattern for something Christmassy. It doesn’t feel right liaising with Father Christmas before I’ve sorted Halloween but there you go.

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