Month: November 2015

Coming soon…….

On By agrarianartisan4 Comments

Last Christmas I hosted a blanket CAL designed to keep your hooks busy during the seasonal holiday.   It was a spontaneous decision to do the CAL, and I was happily surprised when so many people joined in at such short notice.

This year I am planning another blanket CAL to keep you busy during Christmas and beyond.  The design has 8 different square motif designs and can be made any size you like.  My sample blanket uses 6 different colours of DK yarn but you could use as many as you like and, yes, it would be a good stash buster.

My colours:

Yummy Yarn!
Yummy Yarn!

My sample blanket isn’t quite finished yet, but the squares are well advanced in design.  The yarn is John Arbon’s Knit by Numbers, a lovely soft DK yarn, and I’m using 11 skeins.  I’m enjoying making the sample so much that I have just ordered some more yarn to make a second sample, so that I can crochet along with you when the designs are released.   This second yarn is Stylecraft Special DK, which is a much more affordable option.

Here’s a brief outline of the CAL plan:

Next weekend, I will provide details and the first motif design here on the blog.  The first design is a basic square which many of you will be familiar with.  It will show you the size of each motif and uses an average amount of yarn for the all the designs, so will help in showing how much yarn each square uses. You could then estimate your yarn requirements for the size of blanket you want.

On Boxing Day (Saturday 26th December) I will release the next motif design on the blog. You could make a blanket just using these 2 motifs in a checkerboard layout, which I think would look very attractive, so I would love to see someone do this!  The first 2 motifs are both straightforward and would suit someone fairly new to crochet.

The rest of the pattern (6 more motifs, layout etc) will be provided in a downloadable pattern on Ravelry.  This will be a paid for pattern and each week I will add a new motif to it until it is complete.   I will share weekly progress on the blog.

As a reminder of previous blanket CALs on the blog here’s a couple of photos from the last 2:

Christmas 2014
Christmas 2014

 

Spring 21015
Spring 2015

I hope you join in the fun with this CAL.

Happy crocheting xxx

Exciting times!

On By agrarianartisan6 Comments

I’ve plenty of news for you today.

I’ve just returned from a knitting holiday in the lovely market town of Ludlow.   This was the Knitsford Knitgroup autumn retreat.  We stayed in a lovely hotel, The Cliffe at Dinham, where the food was good and the wine menu perfect 😉  It was situated a little out of town, which meant it gave us just the right amount of peace and quiet for a good night’s sleep and lovely for a walk or even a run (yes, someone did go running each morning!). We worked on some projects together in self-help workshops at the local yarn shop, The Wool Shop.  The owner Jean has a lovely couple of rooms on the second floor which were perfect for our requirements and she was a fabulous host.  Holding our workshops in the shop was ideal,  we all found we needed something to help during the event and so it was extremely handy to be able to shop without leaving the premises!    The location was good as it was in the centre of Ludlow, which has plenty of lovely cafes and restaurants for lunch or just coffee and cake, a very wide range of lovely shops which are a delight to shop in with friendly and helpful assistants and a great market.  Of course the best part of the holiday is having a great time with knitting friends, we tend to laugh a lot more than knit !!

Just before I went to Ludlow I was very happy to see one of my designs in Mollie Makes issue 60.  Hexagons are my favourite shape for crochet motifs and at this time of year that means snowflakes.  So this is my design for a snowflake runner/coasters – 4 different sizes and 2 different centres mean you can make a unique Christmas centrepiece to your own design.

Photos courtesy of Mollie Makes

And today yet another exciting happening:  LoveCrochet have interviewed me on their blog and tomorrow they will feature a free download of one of my new designs – a lacy textured cowl.  Look out on their blog tomorrow for more information.

DSC_0329.JPG

Photo courtesy of LoveCrochet

Exciting times, eh?

Happy crocheting xxxx

 

 

 

 

 

The Zodiac Year

On By agrarianartisan8 Comments

If you’ve been following my Ravelry group you will know that I have been making the Zodiac blanket this year.  It was a year-long blanket club designed by Amanda Perkins.  Each month part of the design is released; this is my blanket in January:

January
January

I continued adding to the blanket each month until recently when Amanda released all final parts of the pattern, so that I could complete the blanket well before the year-end.  And here is the finished blanket (with apologies for the light, it is a dull wet day here today):

Zodiac
Zodiac

You can find all the signs of the zodiac in this blanket if you look carefully 🙂

I am particularly pleased with the border.  After weighing my yarn and doing a bit of swatching, I worked out that I had sufficient yarn left to do 4 rounds, one of double crochet and 3 of half trebles using the same colour sequence as the outer edge octagons, so it flows well.  Here’s my border:

The edge
The edge

This photo also shows the beauty of the crocheted octagons and squares.

If you want a zodiac of your own, then you can find the pattern here.  It is a lengthy project but is a work of art and will become an heirloom to love.

Happy crocheting xx