This work in progress is for a baby: a cot or pram blanket made from the Neat Ripple Pattern by Lucy at Attic24. The pattern is mainly treble crochet stitches and Lucy rhapsodises about the rhythm of working with long rows of trebles. I can see what she means! There is something very soothing about working only trebles even though I’ve made several mistakes that required ripping out a row or more. I really love the colours that are going into this blanket. The light isn’t great in this photo but the colours are a deep raspberry, teal and a sherberty yellow/green. The rhythm of the ripples makes the colours sing together (as Lucy says). I couldn’t describe them as harmonizing however; they are more like the interlocking melodies of the Pamela Verrall clarinet pieces played at the last Bradford Music Club session.
Crochet
Little leaves
I’m really pleased with myself because I’ve worked out how to make these little leaves to go with my little flowers. I looke
d at a couple of online patterns to get an idea of how they might go but in the end worked them out for myself. The leaves are made from a silky yarn called Sirdar Flirt which is 80% bamboo viscose and 20% wool; I found an odd ball in the remnant bin of a local shop. I’m liking this yarn not only because it feels smooth because the leaves lie flat whereas I suspect that the flowers will benefit from blocking.
Scissor keeper
Because the ‘first flower’ was made from scrap yarn it doesn’t fit with the rest of the project so I turned it into a scissor keeper to try and stop my scissors getting lost at the bottom of the bag. These scissors, by the way, are Tommy Tippee baby nail scissors which are ideal for air travel because the blades are blunt-ended and less than 6cm long. They also very cheap (£1.50 at ASDA) and widely available so it’s not a great loss if an over-zealous official confiscates them. I’ve flown several times with these scissors in my hand luggage and they have gone through security screening without any problems.
The first flower
I have a project in mind that will require some crochet flowers (using up leftover yarn from the well-travelled blanket).In this month’s Simply Crochet magazine for a throw with five-petalled flowers inside squares so I worked the flower part of the pattern using some scrap yarn and it came out like this! I am so delighted! I like it so much that I have attached it to my scissors in the hope that it will stop them falling to the bottom of the yarn bin.To make the flower, I had to learn a new technique – the ‘magic ring‘. I love the way that the ring pulls closed completely so that there is no hole in the middle of the flower.A well-travelled blanket
This blanket started life in July on the Hot Aire! Belgium tour. Squares were also made in Canada, Thailand, Laos and en route in France, Amsterdam and Qatar. There are 100 squares and it measures 150 x 150 cm (approx). For some of the time I was working on two blankets simultaneously (the other is in this post) because the first blanket was in the process of being made up and therefore too large to carry around). I am really, really pleased with this blanket (and so is Rosie); the colours glow with warmth and it is extremely snuggly.
There are two main types of yarn in this blanket: the solid colours are Jarol Heritage DK which I bought in the local market. There is also a lot of Yarnfair Stripes DK which I bought from Wilko and a single 100g ball of a a stripy DK yarn in fairly dark shades that came from a nearby yarn shop.
Aisha x
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Happy this week
- After a break of more than 20 years, I have taken up crochet again. In any case, I’d never made granny squares. This work-in-progress is a blanket of 80 squares and I am over half-way through assembling the blanket. It’s full of mistakes but the next one will be better!
- One of my colleagues wears Chanel perfume and whenever she visits my room she leaves it beautifully scented.
- On Thursday I attended an ‘agenda-setting’ workshop on multimodal and digital methodologies organised by the MODE node of the National Centre for Research Methods. During the day, people presented their work and this was followed by a mapping of issues in multimodal and digital research. I felt excited and inspired by the presentations and discussions; the day was intense but happy. Saying ‘MODE node’ makes me smile, anyway.