New yaaaaarn

Lookit what came in the mail this week!

Remember when I was short one ball of yarn for my current blanket and couldn't see paying shipping from England for just the one ball, and thereby justified buying everything I needed for an upstairs blanket? Well, that's what this giant gauzy muslin bag from Wool Warehouse is about. It's so jammed with blues and greens you can't see the red, but it's in there!

It's always such a gamble trying to match anything to the upholstery and curtains in our main bedroom and my tiny office upstairs. There's a sofa in each room, both done in the weirdest blue which I would have called navy until I saw navy on it, and the same drapes, which also have a lot of strange colours in the blue and creamy floral print. 

But darned if I didn't nail it with the slightly teal 'Mallard Blue' which is close enough for both fabrics without actually clashing.

I couldn't be happier unless I was actually working on this thing.

See what I mean? These colours are tumbling around on this curtain-print sofa cushion like they're already at home. It's gonna be so good!

Here are more glamour pairings with the drapery fabric. The grey beige of Parchment that matches one of the two stem colours, with the cream, called Cream, that matches the background...

And the grey beige that doesn't quite scream at the mushy peas green (aptly called Mushy Peas) that traces the stems and dominates the leaves.

 

 

And how about a closeup of Mushy Peas with the curling vines on the drapes?

  

These five colours were to be the lineup for this blanket - a lighter sea blue called North Sea, a grey beige, a cream, mushy peas green, and the teal blue:

 

But I have this other pale blue colour from an early shopping spree called Duck Egg, which also matches part of the curtain print... the pear shaped bit just to the right of this ball.

It seems to be friendly enough with the other two blues.

It's also from the other mill that used to make this yarn, and therefore it has the shinier element I don't really like messing around with the matte finish of the other colours. So I'm thinking maybe it could be a border? Or if I opt for a granny square blanket, the yarn I use to piece it all together? 

Or maybe I should leave it out entirely, and use it with the leftover blues in some other small projects for these two rooms. 

SO many possibilities. And so much work to do before I get to pursue them! 

Hope your weekend is full of fun or comfort, and thank you as always for spending a bit of it with me. See you next Saturday, hopefully with something that isn't a blanket. 

(but no promises, heh.)

 

 

 

 

Fluffy fluffs

The good news: the new blanket is going great!

 

Check out these impeccable stripes. So lush. Wish I'd made the original blanket's stripes this wide. 

The bad news... 

Okay, I don't actually use my finished stripey blanket that much. Probably five or six times in the two or more weeks since it's been available. I love the way it looks waiting for me on my ottoman but I haven't been that cold. And I'm not going to complain about the little tails that are starting to poke out of the spots where I ran them in, because that's life with acrylic. There are no little clutching fibers holding each other in place, like with wool.

What does concern me is the fluff. Especially given the aforementioned light use.

I don't know if you can see the serious halo coming off that off-white stripe in the middle. So maybe this second pic will explain it better. Check out the blurred upper end of the pink stripe vs the crisp lower left.

 

And it's super localized, like the slight pressure from my knees and toes are just too much for the yarn's structural integrity. 

Arg, right? and here I've just bought a ton more of this yarn for a third blanket to match the bedroom. I guess I'd better only use that one over the duvet!

But still... learning to make a crochet blanket has been a really soothing process. I was reading yesterday how helpful two-handed crafts are for mental health and addiction recovery, and it made me feel glad that even less-lasting materials like I'm using are available affordably for people who need them for coping strategies. 

Also, I don't know whether I'd have been able to justify shelling out wool prices for a blanket so big it takes nearly three months to make. I've bought plenty of frivolous things, but even I have limits, ha!

(of course, now that I know how to do this, I will totally be shelling out for wool some day.)

Hope you've got a satisfying and high quality project to work on this weekend, or some other pleasant way to pass a little quiet time! Thanks for dropping in and I'll see you next Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colour Combos

Something I find interesting about striped knits (or in this case, crochet) is how quickly the dynamic changes when you add a new colour. 

 

I absolutely love these four stripes together, don't you? The effect is a bit 1970s office drab, but so calming. I also loved the first two colours (the green looks wrong here, but you know what I mean I hope)...

And the next two colours...

Even though those two separate combos are completely different moods. Summer forest and winter frost.

I'm kind of sorry to think of adding the next two stripes...

But I'll do it, and when I finish with the rest of them I'll miss the calm of the first four but love the warmth and controlled chaos of the ten-stripe collection I settled on.

 

This is going to be my second-ever crochet blanket and I was so determined not to mess up like I did with the first one, I started that first green stripe easily ten times, including the time I ripped back when I'd gotten as far as four stripes because I had to accept it wasn't going to be wide enough.

And when I did get it wide enough, I started weighing the yarn before and after each stripe (which I am making wider this time to reduce the amount of ends-running-in I had to do last time) to be sure there wouldn't be any yarn shortages at the end.

Thank goodness too, because I only have one ball of this colour!

And I will need at least an extra ten grams of it. 

I was very lucky in that Wool Warehouse still had some stock with the same dye lot. But it's hard to justify spending ten dollars on shipping for four dollars of yarn, so I might've accidentally bought yarn for yet another blanket. This is going to be my Year of the Blanket, mark my words! Though I might do a different stitch for that one. We'll see.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend with sunshine and no yarn shortages! And lots of colours you like together.

 

 

The complete blanket

Guys, it's true. The blanket I thought would take a few weeks (try: twelve) is DONE.

Isn't it a great match for the drapes in the room where it'll live?

And that border - what a dream! 

Okay... maybe it's not *perfect*. 

Like, really not. 

Though who's to say it's not just beckoning a passerby to unfurl it, the better to curl up and cosy? 

I swear I added extra ease on the corners, but there's only so much you can do when the tension on the sides is irregular, owing to the person crocheting it having no clue what they were doing. 

And it's not like curly corners affect function, right? Ditto the wavy belling inside the borders, caused by the same problem...

 

I had to pinch a bit and skip openings when I was setting up the border, which I did like three times trying to get it as flat as possible.

Still, I'm happy with it. It's a first try at both blanket and crochet, and it's warm when it's on me and pretty when it's folded up.

In the end it came out a bit over three feet wide and a bit over four and a half feet long, which is the perfect length for tucking under on a chilly evening to crochet.

Except... now I'm out of something to crochet. 

Next!

Just kidding. I will of course be knitting socks while under the blanket, and repairing socks, and weaving that scarf I still haven't finished after five years.

(but maybe not till I've finished the second blanket?)

Hope you've got a cheery warm weekend lined up even if it means staying indoors to make it happen, or something else that's fun. You deserve it, amiright? And thanks as always for spending a bit of your time with me. See you next Saturday with anybody's guess for a project to share! 

 

Blanket progress report

It didn't feel like I got much quality time with my stripey crocheted blanket the last few weeks, but somehow she's outgrown her cute project bag and is now living in a pillowcase.

How does that even happen?

I'm so grateful I figured this pillowcase out because the whole thing was getting pretty ungainly. As it is now, I can just turn the pillowcase to work from one folded section to another while I crochet or run in ends. 

 

Last time I had enough progress to show off, I photographed it on our dining table, which is the same width this was going to be. But since then I recalibrated and decided to make the stripes symmetrical from a central point (specifically, a claret stripe flanked by denim blue stripes.) You can see it in the pic above, a little to the left of centre frame.

Here's the first half, from the central point (left) to the start (right):

As the wonkiness of the stripes suggest, I'm new to this and winged the colour shifts as well as the rest. I'm really noticing a light patch to right of centre with a run of green/yellow/off-white/pink, but I think when it's reversed the colours should look fairly balanced, don't you?

At any rate, now that the table isn't the measuring tool, here's how far I still have to go: 

From navy blue through to claret, basically, which is about twenty stripes. 

Three stripes take me an hour to do, and running in the ends on those stripes takes another ninety minutes or so. I guess that means I only have another eighteen hours tops with my bestie before it's time to box her in with the aforementioned border. 

I'd say the end is definitely in sight! Though where those eighteen hours are going to come from is definitely a question. I so wish I had paid attention to the pattern instructions and done two stripes in each colour... so much less yarn wasted, and so much less time on running in ends.

Still, I'm really glad I decided to make a blanket, and I'm still enjoying every minute I work on it. Even the ends-running-in part is becoming meditative and pleasant. Who knew?

Good thing I bought yarn to do it all over again, but the right size this time, for the sofa, amiright?

Happy New Year and I do hope you've had an enjoyable winter break. Thanks for making me part of it and I'll see you next week with... who knows what! Except it probably won't be a finished blanket.

Probably.

 

 

No mint for me

I came to my senses and ditched the mint green from my misshapen disaster blanket, whew. Also I ripped back three rows to start with the smaller hook sooner, and it worked. The blanket is now on the straight and narrow with no noticeable difference in shell size. And it's longer now, woot!

 

It's a whole foot long, in fact.

That's two weeks' work you're looking at. 45 minutes to crochet one colour stripe, and 45 minutes to run in the ends on three stripes, not that I'm watching the clock (I'm totally watching the clock.) I am permitting myself three stripes a day because it turns out, more than three hours in an armchair crocheting is not great for my eyes or hands or overall energy.

Maybe if I was binge watching something cheerier than The X-Files while I work?

With the mint gone, I no longer have enough colour flexibility to follow Lucy's pattern (The Hydrangea Blanket), so I took these pix while taking stock of how I want to balance what's left before making a less flawed blanket for my sofa, because this one is now going to be a lap blanket for moi. Once I realized that, had I been paying attention to Lucy's pattern, I would have done two rows in each colour before changing, but had run in so many ends I couldn't rip back and redo, it was a done deal. 

But there is a second reason to shift this project's focus and plan for a second blanket. 

 

DIGRESSION ALERT:

There is a difference in some of these colours based on where the yarn was made, which impacts my stripes.

Stylecraft Special DK used to be produced in a mill in Turkey, where it was loosely spun and shiny. Now it's coming from a Yorkshire mill, where it's made matte and slightly tighter, so that it appears thinner. As far as I know, all the colours are the same from both mills, but that sheen - whoa. It is really noticeable in person. 

Even in the picture above it shows, I feel... that beige just to he left of the pink, in the lower right corner? That's the shiny one. The pink is matte. The yellow in the middle, and the navy blue to its left, and the repeat of the beige - all from Turkey.  

Both yarns are perfectly fine and I'm really enjoying them, but ugh. Mixed in one project? Not the blanket I dreamed of. 

For my money, the Yorkshire yarn is nicer, because it looks a lot like wool, even though it's not as soft as the shiny one, which also has a lot more (unwanted in acrylic) halo. But right now, Wool Warehouse doesn't have all the colours in stock as Yorkshire mill yarns. What they do have is a delightful ordering system where you can specify which dye lot you want in any particular colour. The lot numbers that begin with MY are made in Yorkshire. So I have reordered all the colours I can that *are* Yorkshire-milled, and that's what's going into the official big blanket.

END DIGRESSION 

The upshot of all this: I am going to be crocheting this blanket FOREVER. I'm only one-third of the way through! Here's the visual: whatever is a brown tabletop and not stripey blankie is territory I have yet to cover.

See what I mean? FOREVER.

On the upside, I've figured out how to crochet without hurting my bad arm. But it's a good thing I've also cast on a new knitting project because it could get really boring for you, watching a blanket grow five inches a week.

My current takeaway on crocheting a blanket is similar to that of sock knitting: it's ridiculous because it is so much easier and more practical, not to mention WAY cheaper, to buy ready made. But it's also brilliant because it is completely addictive and the end result is super dreamy. Even at its current size, this blanket is so squishy and nice, I know I'm not ever going to share it with anybody else!

Okay, I'm off to watch trains, as one does. Hope you have a wonderful weekend lined up and thank you for spending this part of it with me! See you next Saturday, when I will try very hard not to show more blankie pictures. 

Not even in neck roll form, ha!

 

 

 

 

Blanket statement

Hello again and welcome to my potential Hydrangea Blanket disaster! 

 

That's probably an overstatement. I mean, I do have a tiny blister starting on the finger the hook swivels over (will park some bandages by my working chair so I don't forget to put one on for cushioning). And the blanket *is* belling, despite my starting with a larger hook and moving on with a smaller. 

 

Mostly. I did swatch a million times, and I did know I needed to go down to a 3.5mm at about the second colour, but the 4 mm was just so comfortable, apart from the blister! I've done it now, and honestly I don't think the red shells look smaller than the others, do you?

 

So I'm carrying on and seeing a little difference already. Just... not in that picture in front of the window.

Plus I'm 5" into this thing, having dutifully run in all the ends every three colour changes, so it would be a heartbreak to rip back! 

 

In good news, the starting chain is so elastic owing to my having cast on twice as much as I needed, and working into every other loop, it's easy to smooth it out and make it flat. When I do the border later, working into all the loops might help stretch it for good. 

Before the smoothening:

After the smoothening: 

One other development is that when I had it all laid out last night on the dining room table, I measured the width, which is 57". The pattern specifies 47". I reduced the number of chains to achieve 47". So what the heck happened? I mean, I have a BLISTER. How on earth can I be that relaxed as to have my work sag out by 10"??

I can think of only two answers. 

1/ I'm on vacation because I got my manuscript done

2/ Crochet really is that restful.  

On the upside (if you don't count those two pleasant things) those AddiSwing hooks are so amazing, I haven't had a single issue with carpal tunnel like I did when I used a regular straight hook. Apart from the blister and the hazards of that much sitting, I could crochet forever.

Here are the next three colours coming up... 

And they are the last. After that, Lucy's pattern shakes up the order of operations so different colours get a chance to team up. These colours are my choices, not hers, so they won't be as fantastic, but it's so much fun to jump to the next! I'm hoping my minty green will look better in context with the next one coming, and in future colour combinations. It is in my drapes, so I'm having faith in it. 

Okay, gotta dash. Have a wonderful weekend my friends, and thanks so much for stopping by! See you next Saturday, hopefully with more blanket and not less, ha!

 

 

 

 

Brace yourself for colour

Guys, I did it - I finally took the plunge on gear for a colourful Attic 24-style blanket!

This only 12 of the 15 colours Lucy's Hydrangea blanket calls for, and also, almost none of them are the colours she chose.  I think Lucy's colour choices are key to her comforting, inspiring, cheery brand and I love them all, but I just can't blend that much pink and purple into my red/navy/cream-based decor, ya know?

I think I did a pretty amazing job because only three of the fifteen colours I chose were all wrong for the drapes I wanted to match. Working off small colour swatch images from my screen, that was a surprise! And when I went back to the Wool Warehouse site to find three replacement colours, I had no trouble. There are just that many available in Stylecraft Special DK. 

For closeups though, here are some proofs that the matches really are that matchy... even the gorgeous Pink Rhubarb, top right! I so hoped that one would, because I loved the look of it on screen and I really wanted to tuck in as many Lucy-adjacent choices as possible.

And the excess doesn't end there, because I didn't know what size crochet hook I'd need. Only that I wanted it to be an Addi Swing hook, because I'm taking a big enough risk crocheting a blanket after all that trouble I had with my arm over last year's sweater. So...

 

I got the recommended 4mm size, plus one larger and one smaller. 

Something I noticed about the three I got wrong (stacked on the left) is that they look right with my bedroom drapes, represented by this rumpled cushion:

So when I went back to the site to get the additional living room colours - bottle green, midnight (blue), and lincoln (a muted green) I threw in extra denim blue and parchment beige *and* a duck egg blue. But no more hooks! even though I think I might in future need a 5mm one. If it happens: excuse to go into a local yarn store, amiright?

The top left blue (north sea, I love that one so much) and bottom right (denim) are self-explanatory, but here's proof of the mistletoe green and parchment working for those stems on the bedroom fabric:

Ugh re my rumpled cushion. I guess SOMEbody was leaning on it writing furiously to finish a manuscript or something... anyway in the end, Pete and I agreed that the French navy blue I picked is just No for both rooms. It's really a royal blue, which makes me wonder the the official royal blue looks like. Anyway, it's not totally screamy with the drapes and cushions, but it's horrible with the more mallardy-blue sofa we have under the window, so I will think of something else to do with it. 

(and now I wish I had bought a ball of mallard blue... oh well, I can do it when I buy cream to do all the framing around that dream blanket!)

So, as you can see, I have been very busy this week! Finishing revisions to a manuscript that must be done by Sunday night, and choosing colours for a blanket I couldn't stop obsessing about, and visiting the Royal Winter Fair where I bought more alpaca yarn I will show you later, and being inspired by a friend's crocheted blanket with a very fine hook in wool... which you know I am gonna wanna try, if these two blankets don't knock me off my post.

But now I have to get back to that revision work. I am motivated, because I cannot even swatch for the blanket till it's done. Wish me luck...

And have a wonderful week. Thanks so much for dropping in, and I'll see you next Saturday!