Seaside Squares

Around this time last year I made these little seaside coloured Granny Squares and since then they have been sitting at the bottom of my WIP pile waiting for me to give them a bit more attention.

As soon as they surfaced again my first thought was that I wanted to make them a bit bigger so instead of three round Granny Squares I am now making five round Granny Squares and joining as I go. I am also being very good at the moment and sewing in the ends of each square as soon as they are joined.

I am using Stylecraft Special DK in Seasidey colours which are a well known colour palette ~ the ones that I am using are ~

First Row (Neutrals) ~ White ~ Cream ~ Silver ~ Camel ~ Mocha

Second Row (Greens) ~ Aspen ~ Meadow ~ Khaki

Third Row (Blues) ~ Sherbet ~ Cloud Blue ~ Aster ~ Turquoise ~ Denim

I was also going to use Teal but in the end I felt it was just a bit too bright for the look I was after. I wanted a softer more muted tone for this blanket.

I think that all the elements of the seaside such as the water, sky, sand, grass and seaweed are pretty much well captured in the colours that I have gone with.

So far I have made 24 Seaside Squares and I'm absolutely loving the way that they are turning out. I am really glad that I chose to make the squares bigger as it means the blanket will grow much more quickly. My plan at the moment is to have 14 rows of 12 squares so that's 168 squares in total ~ which should keep me busy for a while! Hopefully this blanket will take me much less that three years!!

It's been a bit of an up and down week around here this week, but I have been trying to take some time out to enjoy the little things such as these beautiful daffodils that my Mum bought for me.

And I am also loving that all the pretty spring flowers are just starting to peek their little heads out of the ground just now too.

Wishing you all a very lovely weekend :O)x

Wintry Mandala

Towards the end of last week I was hit by a sudden urge to crochet myself a Mandala.

Now I know that these were very popular last year, but for one reason or another I never actually got around to making one for myself. And up until recently I have to say that I've never quite seen the appeal ~ apart from being very lovely to look at they don't really seem to serve much of a purpose!

I had a quick Mandala search on Ravelry and found this pretty pattern and got myself started. I just used yarn that I had in my stash which was good old Stylecraft Special DK ~ however, I think that cotton yarn is probably the best way to go.

As it has been so cold outside recently I decided to use some cool Wintry inspired colours ~ white :: silver :: denim :: sherbet and turquoise were the ones that jumped out at me and seemed the most Wintry. We have been fairly fortunate in this little Coastal corner and have managed to avoid the snow so far but it has still been bitterly cold outside.

I must say that I am quite pleased at the way it has turned out too! I opted to use a standing stitch rather than a chain 3 at the beginning of each new round which I think made a difference and looks much neater than a chain 3. And although I'm still not sure what to do with these pretty little crochet circles I can definitely see me making a few more in the months to come as they really are quite addictive little things to make! At the moment I am thinking that I may try to make one for each month of the year with maybe a seasonal theme running through each one. I quite like that idea ~ but we'll see how it goes!

Hoping that you all have a very lovely weekend ~  :O)xx

Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe Blanket ~ Ta Dah!

At last ~ I have finally finished my Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe Blanket. This blanket was started away back in October 2011 ~ just a bit more than three years ago! How slack is that!! My poor small boy has been waiting VERY patiently for his blanket to be made. But now he is a very happy boy and can snuggle up in his own crochet blanket the way that it was intended.

This Boy Granny Stripe was made using Stylecraft Special Double Knitting in various shades of blue ~ which were Aster ~ Cloud Blue ~ Denim ~ Royal ~ Sherbet ~ Turquoise. I was also going to use Midnight but once I got started it seemed just a little too dark to sit comfortably with the other blues so I took it out of the mix.



I also decided not to go with working random stripes. I arranged the colours in the order that I thought they looked the nicest and then just repeated the sequence all the way up the whole of the blanket. All very technical!

This was the first few rows after the foundation chain ~ on hindsight I definitely should have gone up a hook size as the beginning of the blanket still seems a bit on the tight side.  You live and you learn!

I not quite sure why this blanket has taken me so long to make or why I seemed to lose motivation along the way ~ however, it's all done now! And it's not put me off blanket making either as I am already making plans to start another one! My daughter wants her own snuggly crochet blanket now too.

This was just over the half way point ~ eleven repeats of colour ~ six different coloured blue stripes in each repeat ~ sixty six granny stripes.

Now for the tricky bit! How difficult is it to try and photograph a large blanket? Nobody told me that I would have to climb on top of furniture and balance precariously with a camera in my hand just to fit the whole blanket into the picture.

However ~ Ta Dah!!

Here it is ~ The Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe Blanket in all it's glory ~ All 122 gorgeous blue stripes of it!

Because the blanket is so big I decided to go with a very simple edge to finish it off. Three rows of treble clusters around the edge of the blanket in Denim, Cloud Blue and Turquoise followed by a simple scalloped shell type border ~ as requested by my boy himself.

Finally ~ some Blankety Facts ::

Yarn ~ Stylecraft Special Double Knitting worked on a 4mm hook.

Measurements  ~ 128cms by 168cms.

Stripes ~ 122 stripes of blue loveliness.

Amount of yarn used ~ nearly 20 x 100gm balls.

Cost ~ 20 x £1.69 = £33.80

Weight ~ just under 2Kgs ~ very cosy and very snuggly indeed!!

I am happy to report that the blanket has been in almost constant use since it has been finished and that my boy has really been enjoying wrapping himself up in his own cosy and snuggly blanket on these recent very chilly wintery mornings :O)xx

Blanket progress

As promised, I'm just popping by to show you the progress that I've made so far with my Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe Blanket. Admittedly there has not been as much progress made with this blanket as I would have liked ~ but that is purely down to me doing my usual thing and letting myself be completely sidetracked with other projects such as knitting socks. Oh!! ~ and running out of a crucial component to hooking a blanket called yarn didn't help me much either!

When I first started planning to make this blanket I wasn't quite sure if I was going to just stick with using blue tones ~ I had been toying with the idea of adding red and cream into the mix. But when I tried the colours out together I wasn't completely convinced that they really worked and decided to follow my instincts and stay with my all time most favourite colour spectrum of blue. And I must say that I am very happy indeed with my final choice.

The yarn that I am using to hook this blanket is good old dependable ~ and very reasonably priced ~ Stylecraft Special Double Knitting. In the following colours :: Denim, Aster,Cloud Blue, Sherbet, Royal and Turquoise.

Each colourful blue stripe of the Little Boy Blue Blanket is made up of two rows of treble clusters, and there are 74 treble clusters in each row. At a rough guess I think that it usually takes me about 15 minutes to work one row of treble clusters, which means it takes me around half an hour to complete each blue stripe. Not too bad! I have managed to get six repeats of each colour from my first six balls of yarn.

I did think that I would manage to get seven repeats ~ but no amount of finger crossing and silent hooky praying would make the last little amount of yarn stretch to complete another stripe. Almost but not quite! I only had another few little treble clusters to go until I reached the end of the stripe! But the yarn totally refused to play ball! Still it gave me a great excuse to go online and indulge in a little bit of yarn shopping ~

Not that many of us normally need an excuse! I ordered another six balls of blue loveliness and then took the liberty of adding a few more colours to my stash for some future projects that I have already lined up in my little head!

We have now broken up for our Half Term holidays, so I am looking forward to spending a lazy week at home with my two small people. I hope that you all a lovely weekend and I'll stop by again sometime early next week :O)xx

Granny Stripes

At last!

I have finally managed to get around to making a start on a Granny Stripe blanket. I have been wanting to crochet one of these lovelies ever since they started doing the rounds of Blogland last year, but have just never had the time up until now. But here I am jumping on the Granny Stripe bandwagon and I have to say that I am really looking forward to the ride.

The foundation chain has to be done in multiples of three ~ so I sat yesterday and crocheted a chain whilst counting 123,123,123 in my head. In the absence of a size 5 hook I remembered to crochet my chain loosely on my trusty and very favourite size 4 in order to make crocheting the first row as easy as possible.
I am making this Granny Stripe for my little boy and want it to be around about the single bed size when finished. So, I carried on counting 123, 123, 123 in my head until I thought the chain looked the right length and then ran up stairs with hook and chain in hand and measured it against the bed. That's about as technical as I get these days!

This Boy Granny Stripe is going to be made using Stylecraft Special DK in various shades of blue, with perhaps a few other colours thrown in for good measure. But I've not quite decided whether or not I'll deviate from the Blueness or not yet!


These are the colours that I have chosen so far ~
Aster ~ Royal ~ Midnight ~ Denim ~ Cloud Blue ~ Turquoise ~ Sherbet ~ Bluebell.
I am really excited about this blanket and now that I have finished the tricksy foundation row I am raring to go and can't wait to go whizzing along the rows with ease ~ making lots of lovely Blue treble clusters.

Right! I'm off now to put the kettle on for a cuppa and then get settled for a few rows of Granny Stripes :O)xx