Sunday 13 May 2012

Something Old and Something New

I got a belated birthday present from my sister this week, something new to add to my stash and a pattern book to use it with full of really beautiful old-fashioned doilies. I've been eyeing it up on Ravelry for a few weeks now so when it arrived I just had to dive right in and get started!

Anchor Pearl 8...loving the selection of colours I have to work with!

The progress so far

The book is called Vintage Floral Doilies and you can buy it at Annie's Attic. Check out the one on the cover - looks amazing but I'll need to get more crochet cotton before I attack that one.I've started with the Butterfly Garden Doily and so far so good, it seems to be coming along nicely. I did have a little trouble with my first butterfly though - I found the pattern a little ambiguous in rounds 3 & 4 as it tells you to work into the chain spaces of the previous rounds but it isn't really specific about which chain spaces you're meant to work into. I settled for working the shells of round 3 into the ch1 between each shell of round 2 and skipping the ch2 spaces within each shell....although I think it would have worked equally well doing the opposite (Update: Yes, for the rest of the ones I've done so far I've worked the shells into the middle of the shells of the previous round and skipped the ch1 sp's and that works just fine). In round 4 I worked the triple crochets into the ch2 space within each shell and the sc over the ch5 sp between each shell. Hope this is useful for anyone else having similar doubts about the pattern. I'm afraid I can't give away any details of the full pattern as it's not a free one and therefore I have a feeling the author would not appreciate me publishing it here!

But how should I colour my butterflies???

I'm also having a bit of a colouring dilemma with the butterflies. The cotton I got isn't quite enough to stick to the pattern in terms of colour and although I could just buy more, I'm a little impatient and would like to crack on with what I've got so I'm thinking about adding some different colours. So far I've only done the one butterfly in light pink, which I think I'll edge with the darker pink. I might also add in some blue and of course some of the gold and purple to tie it all together. Not sure though, it's tricky!
In response to a couple of comments I've had I want to go back to the blanket I talked about in my last post. I linked the source in that post, which gives a pretty detailed description of the method but I'll just give a quickie here: It's a normal granny square, nothing fancy, just 3dc shells with ch1 in between them along the sides and ch2 in the corners. The cool colour effect is achieved by working with 4 strands of yarn together and because you're using so much yard, you need a pretty big hook, I used 10mm. Choose four colours that are quite similar and at the end of each round drop one strand of yarn and join in a new colour in its place. Every strand therefore gets kept in for four rounds and then dropped and that's how you get the colour merging effect. The border is 5dc shells in each ch sp and slst in the middle dc of each shell of the previous round. The blanket is still for sale on Etsy so if you like it, feel free to spread the word ;)

I've also been asked about the squares in my background picture so in the very near future I'll post about those. They are the "something old" in my title - they were one of the first things I crocheted back when I was learning. I got the patterns from a friend and just started making them from whatever scraps I had lying around as samplers. Someday....I don't know when, but someday, I will finally get round to making them into an afghan. I'm very good at being inspired and starting cool new projects, if only I were as good at finishing them!


Sunday 6 May 2012

Etsy

So the giant granny square is finished. It took a little longer than expected but still went quite fast. I made it up to a metre and a half with a whole rainbow of colours. I started with random odds and ends from my stash but quickly realised that my stash just wasn't up to the challenge and just had to drag myself to the wool aisle in prisma ;) i'm really pleased with how it's turned out though and I've decided it's time to try out this Etsy thing. I've set up my shop so now I'll just cross my fingers and see if I get a sale...






I haven't quite decided on my next project yet. I have a renewed stash left over from this blanket so there's lots of potential to try something interesting. I'll just need to wait for some inspiration to come my way...