Hooky Happiness

Ta dah! My first effort at designing a crochet blanket.

 

This week's Saturday Snapshot is an update on a blog piece I posted in August last year showing a piccie of a Work in Progress for my Younger Daughter. At that point she and her Boyfriend were just about to move to a flat in London, and they wanted a cuddly crochet blanket  big enough to wrap around them both as they sat on the sofa - even though they didn't actually have a sofa at that time!

They wanted something bright and cheerful, in Superman colours, which is not necessarily my usual style, but I was happy to oblige. I decided on granny squares, because they're quick and easy, and I love making them, but I didn't want my usual random effort with a mish-mash of different colours and yarns in random squares or stripes. No, I wanted something clever, with a properly designed pattern, and I had in mind a central panel, of blue and yellow squares, edged in white, surrounded by lots of red (YD's favourite colour) with yellow and blue stripes all around the edge.
 

Work in Progress!

I originally planned one shade of red for the main part of the blanket, but it was very red indeed, and I was afraid it might be too dominant, especially as red is not my favourite colour (but YD loves it, and that's the main thing, because it is her blanket, after all). Anyway, I added a second, slightly darker shade (like a nice dark, red wine) to give a bit of interest, and I really liked the effect. It wasn't my usual palette at all, but I loved working with these colours because they were so cheerful and uplifting. 

 

Woollie wonders... Vibrant colours for a crochet blanket.

The worst bit was trying to fathom out how many different squares I could produce with four colours (two blues and two yellows) for the central panel. However, YD's Boyfriend, who is a real whizz at maths, came to my rescue,  and explained that I would end up with 24 different squares, which really surprised me - I never dreamed that so many variations could be created from just four colours. Apparently it's all to do with something called factorial notation (hope I've got that right), and there's a magical formula for working this kind of thing out. I never knew numbers could be so fascinating - or so useful for arty-crafty stuff!

Thready, steady, go... Stitching in the loose ends.

In the end it turned out that 24 little squares didn't make a big enough panel, so I doubled up and made two of each design. And I was amazingly well organised, and made a chart, listing the colour patterns for each square, and ticked everything off as I went along, so I didn't lose my way and end up with lots of the same block, and none of another! Then, once I'd stitched all the pieces into shape for a rectangular panel, I just kept hooking round and round and round until it was more or less the right size, then made a pretty, loopy, shell-like edging, and ta-dah, it was finished - apart from all the loose ends which had to be stitched in... Hundreds of them... I always promise myself I'll do that as I go along, but I never do, and I always regret it!


Earning my stripes!

It took an awfully long time, and used an awful lot of wool (I wish now I'd kept track of the amount) and there was quite a bit of unpicking and redoing as I went along, and I had no idea how big it should be, so I kept laying it out on the bed - I figured if it covered a double bed it was OK! And, of course, I had other sewing/woolly projects on the go at the same time, so there were periods when I didn't anything on the blanket for quite a while, and sometimes I wondered if it would ever get finished. But eventually I stitched the very last loose end in just a couple of weeks after YD and her Boyfriend bought themselves a bright red sofa, so between us our timing was pretty good.

My blanket (I still think of it as mine) now has pride of place draped over the sofa, and, though I say it myself, it looks absolutely fabulous. And I know self-praise is no recommendation, but I feel very proud of my achievement.



Cosy comfort.... I draped the finished blanket over our sofa, and liked it so much
I was really sorry when I handed it to my Younger Daughter!

My Week!

Oh dear, I was going to be so good, and blog every other day, and it’s been over a week since I last wrote anything here, so I’m going to post some words and pictures about my week. Let’s start with last Sunday, when the Man of the House joined me for a walk along the Coventry Canal. We went up as far as Fazeley Aqueduct, which runs over the River Tame. And you can look down and see water below you, as well as the water beside you, which always amazes me. It was a very grey drizzly sort of day, and there were raindrops hanging everywhere, so I took this picture of raindrops hanging from one of the metal work on one of the beam bars at the lock - not my usual style of photography, but I am trying to get some different and more un usual shots, instead of landscapes and flowers. 

Raindrops on metal... I liked the way the drops of water contrasted with
the rusty marks on the metal handle.

Then we went into town and treated ourselves to Sunday lunch, and had a wander round. Children were singing in the Market Square, as part of the celebrations for the Christmas Lights ‘Switch-On’, and there were craft and food stalls selling all kinds of goodies, including these home-made pies, which the Moth (the Man of the House, remember!)

We were assured that no penguins were hurt making this pir!

We  were a little alarmed at the Penguin Pie, but it turned out to be filled with fish and penguins eat fish, so I guess it’s pie for penguins, not pie of penguins! Penguins seem to be everywhere at the moment, so I dug out an old Jean Greenhowe knitting book with patterns for these…

Right, which penguin shall I try and knit?

Actually, I prefer crochet, but these are kind of cute, and I’ve always meant to have a go at them, and I’ve got black and white wool in the stash, and some knitting needles, so perhaps now is the time to knit a penguin!

I’m trying to walk every day, so on Monday off I went to Warwickshire Moor, one of our local ‘wild spaces’. It’s a small remnant of what was once a large area, and it’s not how I think of a moor at all – we’re definitely not talking Dartmoor here! It lies alongside the River Anker, and there are lots of little pools, and streams and drainage channels, with reed beds, and grassy areas, and a small wood. In summer it’s glorious, with masses of dragonflies and butterflies and all sorts of other insects, and a lot of the water dries up. But in winter every little dip and hollow fills with water, and the land oozes water with every step you take, but there’s still plenty to see and enjoy.

The viewing/dipping platform is usually well above the River Anker,
but there's been a lot of rain, and the water is very high.

Mud, glorious mud.... Wellies might have been better!

 On Tuesday I woke to a different world – there had been a hard frost overnight, and everything was encrusted with thick, white, icy crystals, while all the puddles had frozen solid, and everything was festooned with cobwebs which looked as if they had been spun from twisted cotton threads. They were unbelievably beautiful, so I grabbed the camera, and went out for a walk to snap them – and I got some jolly strange looks and comments from people who obviously thought I was a madwoman!  

A cobweb, covered in frost.

Sadly, by the next day the temperature had risen, all those magical cobwebs had vanished, and the weather was back to a grey, murky, misty, drizzle, so I walked to Lakeside (another of our little ‘wild spots’) looking for some colour to brighten the day. And I found it! Golden leaves glowed through the mistiness, and all kinds of red berries positively shone through the gloom in the most cheery fashion you could imagine. And I met lots of dog walkers, who all stopped for a chat, and one of them recommended other places to walk, and another told me about Thailand, where he used to work, so it turned into a very sociable morning! 

A rosy view of life... There were lots of rosehips, in all shapes and sizes.

Bright and shiny holly berries. 

Thursday was Oxfam day, and I was busy in the Lichfield Books and Music Shop – I only walked as far as the bank and the sandwich shop.

Me and my Oxfam brolly pictured outside our lovely shop earlier
in the year - but I've used it so yuo can see how nice our shop is.

However, on Friday I donned my walking boots again, and the Moth went with me, down through the Castle Grounds, which are beautiful at any time of year, and into town where we browsed around the shops, and ended up enjoying a restorative lunch in Wetherspoons before wending our way home!

Tamworth Castle.

For some reason Saturday was a ‘bleh day’ when I lacked the energy and enthusiasm to do anything, and when nothing seemed to go right, so I sat crocheting a blanket, which is now big enough to go over my knees while I work, and is all snuggly and comforting!

Snug as a bug in a rug... Or a blanket!

And that brings us back to Sunday again, and a walk round Alvecote Wood, which is one of my favourite places. It’s a patch of ancient woodland, full of dappled light, which always makes me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, ‘Pied Beauty’. There’s a wildflower meadow, and pools, and all kinds of plants, fungi, birds, insects and other wildlife, and it’s very beautiful, and very peaceful. Owners Stephen and Sarah, bought the wood after falling in love with it seven years ago, then acquired some adjoining land, and planted new trees. They’ve won environmental awards for the work they do to preserve and improve the area. This was their last Open Day of the year, and the wood will be closed to the public until the new programme of Open Days gets under way in the spring.

If you go down to the woods today...

 

Tangled Wool!

Good morning all! Are there any other crochet enthusiasts out there who battle with self-tangling wool? Or perhaps some mischievous elf or gnome has taken up residence in my home, like one of those brownies or hobgoblins you come across in old folktales, you know, the kind who help with the household tasks as long as you keep them happy and well-fed… But break the rules and they can be very tricksy indeed, creating chaos and confusion instead of order and comfort...



Things were worse than this to start with! I was half-way through
sorting it out when I decided to take a photo.

When I stop hooking I carefully wind my yarns, and stash them in one of those brightly coloured plastic baskets you can pick up quite cheaply in supermarkets, garden centres and DIY stores. I’ve got a couple, and they’re pink, so they look pretty, and have handles, so they are practical as well, and can be toted around the house with ease. You wouldn’t think things would get so muddled up inside them, but they do… Scissors and hooks vanish overnight, while yarns fling themselves about, coming to rest with strands entwined round strands, like beans on a stick, but much more tenacious… Then there are the knots that appear by magic… Knots previously unknown to Man, impossible to unravel… Who makes them?

The whole thing is one of Life’s Great Imponderable Mysteries, but whatever the reason, I need a solution – and I think I’ve found it! I had a Lightbulb Moment whilst trying to disentangle the latest Work in Progress (actually it’s one of several, because I like to have a number of projects on the go at the same time). This particular WIP is a ripple blanket (pattern courtesy of Lucy over at Attic 24 – I wonder if she gets this problem?). Anyway, there are an awful lot of threads because there’s an awful lot of wool (oddments and new), to say nothing of all those loose ends I promised to weave in as I went along, but never did.



Old-fashioned brown elastic bands make great wool detanglers -
 much better than the pretty coloured ones which are too thin to
hold the ends of wool in place.

I did consider investing in one those natty gadgets that winds wool into neat little cakes, but they might not stay that So I’m trialling my Brainwave - elastic bands!!! Yes, that’s right, elastic bands…. Not to crochet with (that’s just silly, even though Loom Bands, their posh cousins, are so popular at the moment).

Anyway, I've untangled threads, cut off the knotted sections, and wound my wool into misshapen balls(I defy anyone to produce perfect spheres). Then I slipped an elastic band around each of them, and slung a few into a carrier bag to test my Invention. I jiggled them and joggled them, and shook them all about. I threw the bag up and down and round and round. I prodded it and poked it, and jumped up and down on it!



Balls of wool held neat by a simple elastic band. It's dead simple. You don't
even  have to check that the ends are securely trapped. - you just stick
an elastic band over the ball of wool, and that's that!

Then came the moment of truth, and I crossed my fingers and held my breath as I upended the bag. I could hardly bear to look, but each ball of wool came rolling out in perfect condition, neat, tidy and ravelled (if that’s not a word, it should be – after all, you can have unravelled, so what’s wrong with ravelled as its opposite, especially where yarn is concerned).


Ta-daa! A pink plastic basket  of
untangled wool!

I’m pleased to say my home-made wool detangler appears to work, but only time will tell how effective it really is.  Watch this space for a progress report!

Pumpkins, Spiders, Candles and Leaves!

Well, October has been and gone, the clocks have gone back, dark nights have arrived, the weather has been truly awful, and winter seems to be well on the way, so it’s a bit late for an autumnal post, but I’m doing one anyway for this week’s Saturday Snapshot. 

Table Scene for Hallowe'en.

First up is a Hallowe’en photo, taken by Elder Daughter when she and her boyfriend visited us a couple of weeks back, and I created a seasonal table centre. I crocheted pumpkins and leaves, and made pompoms,and balanced them all on this spooky spider (it’s really a cardboard cake stand – part of a Marks and Spencer donation of goods to Oxfam), and there were Hallowe’en crackers (M&S again, gifted to Oxfam – I couldn’t resist buying both items). And I dug out my little pumpkin candles (saved from last year) and bought chunky orange candle, and hey presto, we had instant table décor, with very little effort! And I know self-praise is no recommendation, but I still think it looks pretty, and I didn’t forget the food (after all, it’s the meal that’s important), so I cooked cooked nut roast, with added cranberries and pumpkin seeds, for myself, and chicken, roasted with fresh rosemary and grated lemon rind for the carnivores, who tucked into both dishes with great relish, so it’s just as well I did 
plenty of the veggie recipe!

My 'rescue' embroidery of a Woodland Cottage in
Autumn, complete with trailing threads!

Next up is an autumnal embroidery. A friend of my mother’s started doing it years ago, and gave it to mum to finish, because she felt she wasn’t up to working on it any more. Mum said her eyes weren’t good enough for cross stitch, so she gave it to me, and I’ve been working on it (on and off) over the last six months or so. It’s not quite as easy as I thought, because the lady who was stitching it worked inwards from the edges, and I continued that way, although I always find it better to start at the middle and work out. However, although the edges are now finished, the central panel is not aligning correctly, so I am following the chart as best I can, adding in compensatory stitches to fill the gaps in some places, and missing some stitches out altogether. Hopefully, because there’s a fair amount of flowers and foliage, no-one will realise there’s anything wrong!

There only seems to be a black and white image with
the instructions, but it's supposed to look like this,
and was a kit from the Craft Collection Ltd

I want to finish it because the lady who started it died recently, and she was such a nice person, and was a such a good friend to Mum. Anyway, I love the autumnal colours, and the shapes of the leaves and seeds around the edge, and I’m sure it will be OK when I finally complete it. It should look like the picture above.

A Chestnut Tree in MacGregor Park - it's lost a lot of
leaves since I took this.

Continuing the autumnal feel, I have some photographs I took a few weeks ago, showing trees, leaves and berries before the bad weather kicked in, and we were still at the stage where I was thinking of Keats – you know, the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and so on, and so forth.  I love that poem. 

Hawthorn berries- I can always recognise these!

The sky was blue, and the sun shone, and the trees were still full of leaves, which were just beginning to turn colour, and there were berries, and fruits, and seeds. It certainly doesn’t look very mellow or fruitful at the moment: there are tattered dead leaves blowing everywhere, and lots of fallen twigs, and the outer casings of conkers and beechnuts, and broken wings of sycamore seeds, and acorn ‘cups’ (the acorns have disappeared).

Oak 'apples' - they are made by some kind of gall wasp.

And everything looks very wet, and it’s quite blustery, but there are still bright scarlet berries on many trees and bushes, and if you look closely in the wooded areas you can spot fungi growing through the debris.

Beautifully coloured leaves were everywhere in the Town
Wall Nature Reserve, and this was one of the nicest.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda, at West Metro Mummy - click to follow the links to other participants.

Some kind of fungus in Alvecote Wood.

Hooky Happiness

A rosy view of life...

Today Hooky Happiness is the order of the day… And half-finished hooky happiness at that. I love crochet. I’m not very good at it, but you get such quick, colourful results, and you can work the same designs in different yarns to produce a chunky flower or a delicate snowflake. And, as long as I’m not following a complicated pattern, I can sit and hook while I listen to a good play on Radio 4, and watch an old film, preferably in black and white. Something like Brief Encounter, or Casablanca. When it comes to books I like a happy ending, but when it comes to films I love sad love stories and, odd though it may sound, I really enjoy sitting weeping into my wool.

Squaring the Circle: I'm sill trying to decide how to
get straighter edges and corners on this!

But I think I must have a low boredom threshold, because I like to have several projects on the go at once, preferably in different colours and designs, so I can pick and choose depending on my mood. So, at the moment I’m working on a blanket for my elder daughter, all in shades of black, white and grey. It features a large circle, edged into a square, surrounded by five smaller ‘square circles’ to make lots of blocks. I’m going to join them so they’re offset, rather than is straight rows, and fill the gaps with more of the smaller ‘square circles.

 The design is from Dorien, at Just-Do, who gives lovely clear instructions (although you need to be aware that she uses American terminology, but it’s simple enough to write an English version, which is what I do, because otherwise I get confused). Her completed blanket is fabulous, in a rainbow of colours, and her technique is much better than mine. I must admit, I’m having problems with edging and corners on this one – I’d like it to be much sharper and more geometric looking. . I’ve put in an extra chain on my corners, as she only uses one, and I think it’s better with two – the crocheters (is there such a word?) among you will understand what I mean. Hopefully, I can steam or block into a better shape by damping it down and pinning it out, which is something I don’t usually bother with, but on this occasion I think it will help. However, I’m not sure whether to do each individual square, or create the larger six-piece shapes first. It calls for a bit of experimentation I think.

Work in Progress: I'm going to unpick the red edge,
and add another two squares, so I've got six in each
panel. And I might try some with navy instead of red.

Then I’m doing a very different blanket for my younger daughter (it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t do them one each!). This one is lovely and bright and cheerful, with lots of yellows and reds and turquoises, and I’m still fiddling around with the design, but basically I’m using traditional granny squares, and making them up into panels, edged with red. Grannies are very forgiving if you’re not always as accurate as you should be! 

Sitting Pretty!

And I’ve made a round rainbow cushion cover (thanks to Lucy at Attic 24 for the idea). This is so so easy to do: you just keep whizzing round and round, increasing as you go, and using colours that please you. My work buckled up now and again, but it was easy peasy to remedy – I just skipped an increase round, and did the same number of stitches as the previous time! Occasionally I had to unravel before I could put things right, but it was like magic! And I was surprisingly sensible, and kept track of what I’d done, so I had a pattern to follow when I hooked the back (using the same sea-greeny turquoise as the outer edging), so back and front are exactly the same size and shape. Clever, huh?!

Bead Feast!

Then I made a lovely, wavy, lacey edging, with glassy beads (threaded on to the wool at the start) which will probably make it most uncomfortable to sit on, but looks sooooo pretty – all shiny and glittery, which doesn’t really show in the photo. I’ve still got to stitch this together, but it was an absolute joy to work, and I’m going to try making another one, using lots of different stitches, like bobbles and clusters, to create texture and interest. 

Keeping Cosy!

Then there’s my cosy which has transformed a manky old plastic container into a handy hook holder, and is very environmentally friendly, and ideologically sound, because it uses oddments from the scrap stash, as well as something that was going to be thrown away. It’s so useful, and I’m so delighted with it, that I’m going to cover a collection of old jars in rainbow hues to store pens, pencils, scissors and all sorts of other things. 

Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosy.

Finally, more creations from the scrap stash…. little two layered flowers! Please don’t ask me what they are for, because I don’t know. I’ve made them before, for my Easter wreath, and a garland, so I am sure I can turn them into something – but basically I do these because they are so much fun, and I love them!