Yes, 1st March is St David’s Day and for me signifies a key date in the seasonal calendar – because I always think of daffodils on St David’s Day and that means spring is just around the corner. This week we have had some sunny weather here in the UK and I have managed to spend a good number of hours in the garden, which raises my spirits at this time of year. The snowdrops are well advanced, the hellebores are in full flower and many of the crocus are also flowering, and yes a few daffodils are starting to fill out their buds. So spring is in the air.
The met office say spring starts on 1st March, but I prefer to use the vernal equinox, usually around 21st March (but I googled it, of course, and found that this year the vernal equinox is 20th March at 12.57pm EDT – don’t ask – just google if you want to know why!).
1st March is also the official release date of the second hexagon in The Hexagon Project 2014. Unofficially I released it yesterday afternoon – because it was already 1st March in some parts of the world! Oh my, I’m not sticking to any firm dates this year am I?
Here’s a glimpse of it:
Hexagon no 2
It’s available on Ravelry if you like it. Some of my testers found this hexagon a little challenging and their comments and queries made me work hard at ensuring the pattern read well. It is fabulous having such good testers, it helps me improve my pattern writing, so I can’t thank them enough.
I’m looking forward to seeing some colourful versions of this hexagon, and maybe someone will choose sunny spring colours!
I finished the February instalment of the Kaleidoscope crochet blanket yesterday, yes only 5 days into the month! Here it is:
Kaleidoscope February
I love how this is growing, there are more blues in it now (I like blue) and whilst working on it I found it was beginning to feel like a lap blanket. I can’t wait for March……..
It’s strange but I now feel a void. I have plenty to do but I have discovered I really enjoy CALs like this. So yesterday I joined another crochet blanket club…..news on that another day!
I‘ve been thinking a lot about colour recently. Perhaps because I’ve been making colourful hexagons for a few weeks ahead of the launch of The Hexagon Project 2014 which I blogged about yesterday here: https://agrarianartisan.com/2014/01/31/the-hexagon-project-2014/
I like to think I use a subtle colour palette in what I do. If you saw my home youwould see it is fairly modern with plenty of oak and neutral shades everywhere – just odd splashes of colour for accent. But I do love colour in many things, just as long as it isn’t glaring out at me from every corner. So I am not afraid to use colour provided it fits in my world.
You won’t find much multi colours in anything I make or design – just look at my Ravelry project and design pages to see how I use colour!
However, my thoughts have made me reflect on the blankets I have made over the years.
The first blanket I ever made was a granny in shades of blue, mainly pale blue. It served me well at uni. It was thrown out years ago – so I don’t have a photo of it. Believe me when I say it was subtle, not glaring.
The second blanket I made was a small knitted hap blanket – beige with red highlights.
Hap blanket
Then came Starry Night by Amanda Perkins, I made it in grey, silver and 2 shades of dark blue.
Starry Night
The fourth blanket I made was another design by Amanda Perkins called Lily. This time I started to use more colour – I wanted lots of red – and that is what I got!
Lily
The next blanket (knitted) was back to my neutral shades.
Heike’s afghan KAL
Then no 6 was a baby blanket in ice cream colours
Baby blanket
And then a small lap blanket in soft blue, green, cream.
Little Hearts
Then I made a granny style blanket in lots of colour – quite a change for me! It is confined to the spare bed and is very practical. But I do quite like the colour pick-me-up as I walk in that room.
I have also made 2 other blankets recently, I’m not going to tell you about them yet, other than to say one is ‘nicely’ colourful and the other is back to my more subtle colour palette.
Now all of this has made me think about the world of crochet. There are so many fields of crochet in the world from the delicate old Irish crochet used frequently in crisp white doillies to the bright colourful world of simple but effective granny squares, with a myriad of styles, taste and colour inbetween. The recent growth in the crochet world has been predominantly in the colourful granny area – after all it is easy to see the impact of colour and grannies are quite quick and easy to make when you are just getting going.
Just recently I have started to sense a slow change in that colourful granny world, maybe, just maybe, it is growing closer to my preferences of subtlety. I think it is about time it should.
Personally, in the world of colourful crochet my preference is always in the direction of Amanda Perkins, her use of colour is exceptional. It is so much more sophisticated than the granny world. If we are to use colour in the world of crochet it is much better to do with sophistication don’t you think?
Yes, I would dearly love to know what you think, so please share your thoughts with me.
This year I have embarked on another adventure in colour – Kaleidoscope.
Kaleidoscope is a mystery crochet blanket club by Amanda Perkins of The Natural Dye Studio – you receive yarn at the start of each quarter and the pattern is released in instalments – one per month. If you are really quick you may be able to join the club for this year – http://www.thenaturaldyestudio.com/kaleidoscope—crochet-blanket-club-2014-391-c.asp
On 14th January this arrived:
Kaleidoscope – Godiva yarn quarter 1
It is Godiva – a pure merino 4 ply, it is luscious and perfect for blankets.
Within no time it was wound into little cakes and given its own home – a perfect little basket.
Kaleidoscope – a basket of cakes quarter 1
On 18th January it had become this:
Kaleidoscope – January
Those little triangles are addictive, you want to begin a new one as soon as you finish the last one. You are itching to see what the colours will be and how it will sit in the design! Roll on 1st February when I can start the next instalment.
I am sure everyone has been very busy preparing for the Christmas time holiday. But if any of you are still keen to squeeze in one last make before it’s too late here are a few ideas.
If you fancy one last minute decoration make hop over to Kerry’s blog to get the pattern for this:
Bohemian Rhapsody; a kit with 144 squares to make. I bought it because of the colours – 75 different colours. For me it was an experiment in colour.
I find squares boring (I’m a hexagon girl) so I decided to do a little every so often rather than bore myself with 144 squares. So I set a deadline – 8 squares every 2 weeks. Last week I decided to speed up – I had only 16 squares to go, the end was in sight – so I just raced away, worked fast so the squares didn’t bore me.
And this is the result:
Definitely Bohemian!
Do I like it? Yes, I love it – the colours are quite spectacular.
Did I learn from it? Yes, I will be more daring with colour in future!
Did I enjoy it? Yes and no, like I say – I’m a hexagon girl! But now I do feel a little bohemian….
This has been a good week for me, lots of really lovely things have happened and it had made me very cheery! So I thought I would share a couple of them with you.
First the lovely Amanda Perkins wrote a blog about me – yes all about me! It was a huge surprise and she said some lovely things, which left me blushing. If you don’t already know about Amanda you should find out now. She, her husband Phil and daughter Daisy are the family team behind The Natural Dye Studio. They hand dye the most gorgeous luxury yarns in North Devon using historical dyes and environmentally friendly methods. Find the website here: http://www.thenaturaldyestudio.com/
Amanda is also a very talented crochet designer and I have had the privilege to work with her for a few years now – she is a joy to work with. She crochets like the wind and produces the most exquisite blankets in next to no time (ok maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but she certainly crochets them a lot faster than anyone else I know). You can find her pattern and books on the website or on Ravelry here: http://www.ravelry.com/designers/amanda-perkins
And her blog here: http://amandascrochetblog.blogspot.co.uk/
The second good thing I want to share is a publication I received yesterday. It is my ‘contributor’ copy of a new bookazine by Tailor Made Publications (the publishing house of Inside Crochet). It is called ’The Knitting Collection’ and comprises 47 different designs, from small home projects to beautiful fashion items. My contribution is a one-skein shawlette, yes a new knitting design from me:
Molly Shawlette
Co-incidentally (or maybe not) it is made with a skein of The Natural Dye Studio’s Angelus 4 ply yarn, which fabulous to work with and so soft.
I really enjoyed reading The Knitting Collection yesterday evening. It has a lovely array of designs in it, the layout and photography is good and there are very few adverts. Altogether, in my opinion, a quality publication and well worth the £9.99 cover price. I don’t submit my designs to magazines often, as I prefer to work to my own timetable, but I am proud to part of this one.
The Knitting Collection, vol 1
Finally, today I am starting block 16 of my Bohemian Rhapsody wrap. It has 18 blocks, so I am getting close to finishing…. my excitement level is growing, so much that I am thinking of bringing the completion deadline forward. I’ll just see how the hooking goes this weekend……………………
I am sure you are wondering if I met the WIP challenge I mentioned in my last blog. Well I am pleased to say I did – but only just! So for the last 10 days I have had the luxury of starting some new projects.
This year I have not made many Christmas presents, I decided it would be good to take a year off making them and I am sure it will be a relief to my family and friends as they have already received hat, mitts and scarves over the last 3 years! But I still feel the need to make something for Christmas. So my new projects have been festive – I have thoroughly enjoyed making some decorations to adorn the parcels I will wrap:
I also found time to design a new snowflake for Kerry. I am calling it Snowflake 2013 and I think I may have set myself a new challenge – to design a new snowflake each year! This snowflake features on Kerry’s blog. You will find the chart for it there as well as a video tutorial – and it’s free. So pop over and have a look, I am sure you’ll be crocheting your own snowflakes soon!
This week I received 2 parcels, one expected but bigger than I thought and one totally unexpected.
I’ll start with the unexpected………..
I had rather a large pile of mail waiting when I returned from my long weekend knitting retreat, but I chose to ignore it for a while. I needed to unpack (mainly to dig out the yarn and other goodies I received on my knitting retreat!) and wanted to catch up on emails. It was quite some time before I tackled the post.
My husband had left it in a neat pile (he’s good at neat and tidy!) with smallest mail on top, largest underneath. So it was bank statement, bill, magazine, junk….and right at the bottom a large envelope marked ‘do not bend’. At first I thought it was this month’s instalment of pure silk mini skeins from Willow Knits (http://www.willowknits.com/), after all most large envelopes and parcels entering this house contain some sort of yarn ……… but no, bending would do no harm to yarn. Intrigued I pulled it open as quickly as I could and found a lovely letter from Ann, a lady who I met at one of my crochet workshops earlier this year and I now count as one of my yarny friends. She spins and knits, and claims to be a crochet novice but is very accomplished. She had joined in The Hexagon Project 2013 (http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/agrarian-artisan-designs/2521297/1-25) and made a beautiful blanket. Her letter explained that I had ‘won’ a prize for the mostly hexagon project but this was code words for the enclosure – a set of 7 handmade cards, one for each hexagon design I gave to everyone who had joined in. They had (mostly!) a hexagon theme with a short description on the back. They are beautifully made and cherished – it will be hard to give them away as their usual purpose commands! I was so touched and can’t thank Ann enough for such a lovely present.
Mostly hexagons
The second parcel came from the USA. I had won a ball of yarn in a blog contest this summer and Laura had sent the parcel through with what she described as ‘a few little extras’. So I was expecting a small package that would fit through the letterbox. But the postman rang the bell carrying a larger parcel than I expected………. a few little extras is quite a lot to me – 3 more balls of yarn and an ergonomic crochet hook. Is that little? I think not!
So I now have 4 balls of yarn from the USA, none of which is available here in the UK, so is quite a treat for me. Mohair, alpaca, super bulky wool and some ‘fur’ yan, quite a lovely mix which I think Laura spent some time putting together. Thank you so much, Laura.
US mail
So far I have a few little gems of ideas of what I will make with it, some of the yarns remind me of Christmas……… so watch this space!
I have been playing with colour a lot in recent months. It was all sparked off by Bohemian Rhapsody, that design just made me want to explore colour more. And I have been studiously sticking to my plan of making one block of Bohemian Rhapsody every 2 weeks. I have now completed 11 – only another 7 to go.
Inspired, I bought 2 packs of The Natural Dye Studio’s Dazzle HT in rainbow colours when I visited Wonderwool Wales. Most of one pack became a subtle colour exploration with the Wild Diamonds Wrap:
Wild Diamonds Wrap
And I am now working on something with the remaining 6 colours which may take a while, so I won’t share that with you yet.
What made this colour work most special was that the yarn was a present, totally unexpected and very welcome. I was feeling a little low and Amanda sensed I needed cheering up, so she sent me a pack in the post! I can’t tell you how wonderful a gift it was – 10 mini skeins of the complete rainbow, it came at just the right time and really raised my spirits. I can’t thank Amanda enough. So, of course, it had to be made into something beautiful. This is the result:
Rainbow’s End Cowl
You can’t tell from the photo just how soft this yarn is. But you can tell it gives good stitch definition and it blocks well; my uneven knitting now looks quite passable!
It is now written as a pattern and can be found in my Ravelry, Craftsy and Etsy web stores.
All this colour work has really boosted my creativity, and yet another colour project is on my hook right now! So there will be a few more colourful reveals in the not too distant future.
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