Willow Square Blanket

 I am so excited about showing this off.  I started this well over a year ago. Probably two years ago but I took a year out from it. I picked it back up again three weeks ago and it is now finished. The longest part being the border.

These are the colours I plan for my bedroom when I get my new home and this blanket is in preparation for that. I can't wait to see it on my new bed. I have actually used it already, briefly. Couldn't help myself but it's now safely stowed away until it gets a new home.

I used the Willow Square from Jan Eaton's 200 Crochet Blocks. I reviewed this book previously. It's a pretty square and it's versatile. I have seen it done in just one colour or several colour combinations. It looks good each time and it looks different each time. If you are experienced at crochet it's not that difficult to do. Having said that, when I went back to it three weeks ago I had great difficulty with one of the rounds. Couldn't get it to work out at all. I had to go to my blanket and look at how I had done the squares before and use that rather than the book. After joining together a line of squares and starting to join it to the main blanket I realised I had missed out a round on all these new square. It just meant I had to undo the joining and then add the missing round. I didn't have that problem the first time. This is what I get for setting it aside so long.

I don't have an image of the yarn. I didn't think to do that when I first started this. The yarn is a 4ply by the Women's Institute which is exclusive to Hobbycraft. Even though it's an acrylic based yarn it has a silky smoothness to it and a slight shimmer. It's lovely to work with although a little bit splitty like cotton. Otherwise it's lovely to work with and worth it for those colours. I used a 4mm hook and the squares came out a decent size. The blanket is 12 by 12 squares. I probably could have gotten away with 10 by 10 but I like the size and when it comes to blankets I usually err on the side of caution.

When I worked on this initially I had a vague idea that I wanted a fairly simple border. Not my usual fan border. Possible just a few rounds of dc stitches. In that time I had picked up a book on borders. Given that I had a lot of yarn leftover it was never going to be simple and so I picked out this bobble border. It's not too lacey and so I think it highlights the willow square rather than take the attention away. I also think that it fits in with the bold colours of the blanket. The border was easy to do but it ate yarn and I worried that I would have to buy more. Turned out I just had enough. The book is called Around The Corner: Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman. I plan to do a review on it at some point so I won't say too much there.

So that's my blanket and another one of my WIP list. If you are on Instagram I highly recommend you search Willow Square to see all the different images. Or even google it.

Blanket Club Month 9

This months blanket club box arrived from Lisa of For the Love of Yarn. Of course I was still half way through one skein of yarn in the previous month. Oops! I absolutely love the coral. It's a lovely colour and follows on nicely from last month yellow (for those who are joining as they go). It actually reminds me of a pair of socks I knitted once, for my gran I think. Same colour but this yarn is much softer. It also has little splashes of red here and there which I love.

The little extras this month was this lovely ribbon. I love ribbon. Have a box full of it as I used to buy ribbon whenever I saw it on sale. These will be lovely additions, or maybe I should actually use it. I especially love the lace and think it would make a lovely addition to some ankle socks. I think I even have a pattern that involves stitching some ribbon to the cuff.

I didn't cheat. I finished off the yellow squares before I even started this months. This months square involved a new stitch which I had never heard of let alone done before. Thankfully Lisa kindly provided a link to a youtube video which showed how to do it. Being too lazy to type it all in I just typed the stitch into the search engine and used this video which was handy. Although frustrating. Too long spent working up to the stitch while I'm shouting at the screen to just hurry up and show me how to do it. It worked though and if you want to learn it go ahead and view it. You will also find it linked on my new page titled craft tutorial links.

With this square I had to leave out a round so that it would be the same size as all the others. It's the way I crochet. The logical step would be to leave out the last round but that made it too small. Someone else had the same problem and they mentioned that they had left out the third round rather than the last. It made no sense to me. I tried it though and sure enough it worked. I have almost finished the squares for my mum's blanket and won't be long in moving on to mine. Loving this new stitch.

Spring Plans

It's been an awful week for weather. Every time we think the sun is going to stay out it starts raining with the occasional hail stones and even a flurry of snow. This spring I have been promising to help my mum with her garden. However, every time we plan to do something the bad weather interferes. I was able to sneak out and take a few photo's of her daffodils.

It hasn't stopped me from picking up some seeds and there are still some time to plant them. I usually buy seeds for my mum each year. It's something both my sister and I have always done. This year I have picked up a few extra. Some of which my mum had requested for her hanging basket and some I picked because of the colours (and because they attract bees).

I also couldn't resist picking up some bulbs even though they can't be planted until much later. As my mum has a love of red I couldn't walk away from the Canna Lily. Fingers crossed the weather will better the next time we plan to go into the garden.

In the meantime I have the next yarn from the blanket club to work on. I love the green which is fitting for spring. I have only managed a few of this months squares but they do seem to work up quickly. This months little extras are the two pretty crochet flowers. Lisa has asked that we send some photo's of what we do with them. It might be a while before I am able to do it but I have plans for them already!

I have also been buying up a fair share of magazines. After a few years of limiting myself to one or two I have went a little mad of late. I really need to work on something from at least one of them so it doesn't look like I'm needlessly wasting money.

One of my recent magazine purchases was Simply Crochet. It's not a magazine I regularly buy unless I spot a project I know that I will do. This time though it was the freebie that caught my attention. It came with a tunisian crochet hook and there is a pattern in there for beginners. I have always wanted to give this a go since a friend of mine took it up a few years ago. Maybe this will encourage me to do finally try it.

It also contained an article on blogging. It gave hints and tips from various bloggers. I thought it was quite interesting and worth reading if you are thinking of starting up your own blog. It also has a good list of some crafting blogs which are worth checking out.

Speaking of which, I have updated my crafting blog page and added a few more to it. If you like a good crafting blog please go have a look. Oh and if anyone would like to get into blogging and would like to do a guest post here then please feel free to let me know. I don't get anything out of it other than the chance to showcase some talented people.

Lastly, I have a few planned posts coming up. Including some pinterest posts which I have been missing.

200 Crochet Blocks by Jan Eaton - Book Review!

I have had this book on my shelf for a few years now. I bought it when I first decided to learn crochet. I think I picked it up a few times to look at all the pretty squares I was going to make but never had the confidence in my skills to use them. It's only been recently that I have been able to confidently read a crochet pattern. The lovely lady who taught me how to crochet my first granny square also had this book and I know that she has used it and created some lovely squares with it.

I have been using this book on and off this month so I thought it was about time that I reviewed it (it's still available). I don't have many squares to show you but a number of squares that I have made in the past are in the book.

Of course, I also tend to make the squares bigger than they intended to be because I quite like them like that. This goes for the basic granny square (or plain granny as it's called in the book).

Same goes with the solid granny (or square target as the book calls it). There are a total of 212 sqaures in the book. The downside is that it includes variations in colour schemes as a new square. For example, Coral Seas square is listed as four different squares for each colour scheme. A tiny part of me sees that as cheating. However, it can also have a positive as it can show people who maybe aren't as confident at playing with colour that changing colours can change the look of a design.
 

It has some basic squares like the ones the plain granny and the target square and also more difficult squares such as the willow square (which you can see above). Each square is given a difficulty rating which will allow you to assess which ones require more skill and concentration. Unless of course you are like me where you just go for the pretty and hope for the best. At the bottom each pattern it also give suggestions for other squares that you can mix and match with along with their page number. Handy if you are making a blanket or cushion and want to try out different techniques.

There is a handy section at the back with diagrams on how to carry out different techniques including suggestions for joining your squares together. It even has some pretty edging designs and shows you how to work out the size of the square based on the yarn you use. All very handy. The front also shows you examples of different squares all together to make a blanket. So if you are coming up blank you could always pick one of these to follow.

The patterns themselves are all in written form rather than graphs. I can understand this as these instructions take up less room and therefore making way for more squares. Although it does show you the different stitches and what they mean I think if you are new to reading patterns then it might prove more difficult for you. That's not to say you shouldn't use it if you are learning. I used it to teach my friend and she got a perfect granny square out of it. I think that maybe you might need it along with other forms of help such as youtube (just be aware of the British and American differences - this book uses British terminology).

All in all a good book for all skill sets. I think it's one that I will use again and again.