Plummy solid square crochet blanket

Posted by louisa on Monday 3 June 2013 in crochet & knitting, making | 12 comments

This is the second crochet blanket I’ve made in two months. Yes, I know it’s June and gloriously sunny outside but what can I say? I live in the north of England and I’m realistic.

While I was finishing up my Ann Perkins blanket* at the end of April, I had a huge urge to make a solid square blanket: one colour per square like Heather’s Elmer blanket.

I used Stylecraft Special DK – I don’t usually like acrylic but this is alright. In the flesh, the colours are quite nice, it’s not quite as shiny as most synthetics and it’s super cheap. I used six colours: plum, grape, mocha, raspberry, parchment (nicely off white), and claret – the latter being my least favourite colour of the set, but I think it adds a nice contrast to all the purples.

Charity shop finds: a wool blanket & a cute jug

Posted by louisa on Thursday 25 August 2011 in charity shopping | 2 comments

I had to go shopping from drama supplies on Monday and while I was there (Shipley), looking for spookily featureless masks, I had a couple of pleasing charity shop finds too.

Firstly, a big wool blanket.

The label says it’s 100% wool and “British made”, and it’s in very good condition – no felting and just a few snags that a couple of minutes with a crochet hook will set right.

I’ve actually be looking for a nice wool blanket on eBay for a while and based on previous sale prices, had given myself a pretty tight budget of about £12 inc p&p – but this one was just £3.99. Win.

It’s a little scratchy (it is wool after all) so it’s not going to be my favourite buried-up-to-my-face-in-it snuggly but it’ll be more than fine on top of the duvet (it’s at least double bed size) or as a throwover for cold legs/feet on the sofa.

The other thing I got was a bit less practical – well, I’ll probably use it in a less practical way. A cute jug:

It was spattered with tea or coffee stains when I found it and there is a tiny (1mm round) chip near the spout but I thought it was cute enough to still be worth the 60p price tag. It’s about 6inches tall so I’ll use it as a vase on the rare occasions we have flowers in the house and in the meantime it’ll probably be used as a pencil pot.

Have you had any good charity shop finds recently?

Some thoughts on my newly rediscovered love of crochet

Posted by louisa on Friday 28 January 2011 in crochet & knitting, making | 11 comments

After a break from crafts for a while, I’ve got back into crochet with a vengeance recently.

I found it hard to like crochet at first – the first tutorials I did were boring, just creating a stiff solid fabric – and it wasn’t until I made a “net” shopping bag and granny squares that I saw the value of it over knitting. If I was teaching someone how to crochet, I’d start with granny squares which I’d use for the base of a “net” shopping bag/fruit bag – I liked being able to make something actually useful very quickly.

I love the many “sense of completion” moments when making granny squares or similar patches. My first big project was a hexagon hearth rug. I got a small buzz after completing each round, then each hexagon, then each colour combination set, then all the hexagons… Great motivation to keep me going. By comparison, my current stripes project (above) is very slow going and not that rewarding – it takes about 25 mins to finish each stripe and then it’s only one more stripe in a blanket of a hundred (and it’s even more when I do the wrong colour combination and have to frog over an hour’s work). It’s a nice yarn to work with though and when it’s finished, it’ll be lovely.

My favourite stitch is a HTC (HDC in US terms) – the ease of a DC (SC) but with extra height. Is it wrong/nerdy to have a favourite crochet stitch?