Category Archives: My crochet

Such a good Auntie

30 Monday Jan 2012

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My niece is nine years old and loves playing with her two Baby Born dolls.  She also loves pink and apparently she very proudly tells everyone at school that her “auntie from London does crochet”.  Sweeeet. At Christmas she received her second Baby Born, a boy, so she asked me to crochet a jacket for him. How could I say no? And how could I only make one?!

I found the perfect pattern here. The jackets whip up in a couple of hours and you can really go to town with the customisation… as I did.  I adore buttons, so I used this as an opportunity to use as many as I could. Sticking to the same colour range, but using different designs. I think the mismatched buttons make these look extra playful and cheery, don’t you?

The pink scallop edge on this jacket are just shells consisting of 4dc, then you skip one sc, sc, skip one sc and then a shell of 4dc again and keep going.

I’d like to think of this one as having a sporty feel. Sort of.

The flowery button-hole on this short sleeve version is from Betty Barden’s book “Finishing Techniques for Crochet” (you can find a link to the book on the right of this page). I love this book and refer to it such a lot. It’s perfect for adding your own personal touch to a crochet piece.

The row of bobbles here, are also from Betty Barden’s book. See what I mean with using it to customise crochet?

I hope Cayla, and her dolls, like their jackets. I certainly enjoyed making them!

Terrific Tuesday

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

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On a Monday I can still remember the fun I had over the weekend, Wednesday is the middle of the work week, on Thursday I start getting hopeful and on a Friday I can taste the weekend. But what about a Tuesday? It’s so…. just there. Weekend memories are too far away and the upcoming weekend might as well be a year away.

What we need is a bit of colourful inspiration to get us going on a Tuesday, don’t you think? A pretty picture, beautiful scenery or colourful imagery. Yup, that’ll liven up Tuesdays and turn it into a terrific day!

From now on I will go through my photos every Tuesday and find us a pretty picture to add colour and joy to the day.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Aren’t these flowers just too colourful for words?! Hubby bought them for me while he was at the shops on Saturday. He knows his wife so well!

As you can see the Striped Stopper is still doing his draft stopping thing, and very successfully at that!

I hope you are having a terrific Tuesday friends!

Natasja

A pattern and a giveaway

20 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Etsy, My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern

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Today is a HUGE day me and crocheTime. It’s the official launch of my first pattern! It’s this pattern that kicked of my little crocheTime shop and lead to this blog. It’s the crochet wall clock pattern!!!!!!!

Now you too can crochet a clock for yourself or as a gift (please don’t sell it as it’s still copyrighted to me).

I listed it on Ravelry last night. What a rush to see my own little pattern right there in “recently added crochet patterns”!

The possibilities with this clock really are endless. You don’t have to use white for the clock face, and of course the four cirlces can be any colour, or combination of colours. I also give crochet instructions for four different types of edgings, so even if you stick to circles for numbers 12, 3, 6 and 9 you can make four different clocks just by changing the edge.

To personalise it further you can use any applique type crochet design (like I did with flowers) for the 12, 3, 6 and 9. As long as it’s flat enough that clock hands can move over it freely. I’m thinking stars, hearts, cupcakes. Anything will do!

Apart from crocheting instructions I also explain (and show with a couple of photos) how to assemble the clock, using hardboard and a hot glue gun.

The pattern can be purchased for £3.50 in my Etsy shop. Just click here to go straight to the listing. If there are any buyers from South Africa, you can choose Other as your payment option and pay R35 into my FNB account. Just send me a message via Etsy and I’ll give you the bank details.

Once payment is received I will email you the pattern as a PDF file.

But wait, there’s more!

Everyone who buys a pattern between today and midnight GMT on Friday 3 February will go into a draw to win this clock. I’ll draw the name at random on Saturday 3 February and let you know via my Facebook page and the blog who the lucky winner is.

I look forward to sending out lots of clock patterns to you all. Lets hook around the clock!!!

Three versions

18 Wednesday Jan 2012

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One of the three projects, no, I lie, as of this morning it’s four, that I’m working on at the moment is cushions for our livingroom using Melody Griffith’s Roses and Daisies Throw pattern.  I showed you a photo of it yesterday.

Well, the 16 rose squares are done and I’m so happy with them! They look beautiful. However, me being me, I didn’t stick to the pattern.

I added another round to the squares, using Rowan Handknit Cotton in Mist – it’s a super light grey which I love.  I didn’t want to use white as my background colour as it would be too bright for the colour scheme in our livingroom (but I do love, love, love, white as a background colour in colourful crochet cushions and blankets). I still needed a colour that would blend in nicely, be neutral, and make the flowery circles pop. Round of applause for very, very, very light grey!

But what I actually want to show you today are the three versions of the square. At the top of the photo is the square as designed by Melody. It’s very pretty as it is, but I felt I needed a wider border of Mist. So I added a round of DC (middle square). However, on my very last square, I changed my mind. 15 Squares in, I was happy with them and then on square 16 I changed my mind. Typical. 

The DC round looked a bit bulky and when laid out together all those DC borders were just a tad too much. So I unpicked all 15 squares and replaced the DC with a round of SC.

Now

I

love

it!

Sometimes changing your mind is a good thing. I just have to try and do it a bit earlier.

Terrific Tuesday

17 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in My crochet, My ramblings, Terrific Tuesdays

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On a Monday I can still remember the fun I had over the weekend, Wednesday is the middle of the work week, on Thursday I start getting hopeful and on a Friday I can taste the weekend. But what about a Tuesday? It’s so…. just there. Weekend memories are too far away and the upcoming weekend might as well be a year away.

What we need is a bit of colourful inspiration to get us going on a Tuesday, don’t you think? A pretty picture, beautiful scenery or colourful imagery. Yup, that’ll liven up Tuesdays and turn it into a terrific day!

From now on I will go through my photos every Tuesday and find us a pretty picture to add colour and joy to the day.

xxxxxx

A work in progress photo of my Roses and Daisies cushions from Melody Griffith’s Crocheted Throws and Wraps book (you can find a link to the book on the right of this page).

Have a terrific Tuesday friends!

Natasja

The Striped Stopper

11 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern, Ta-daah!

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In my Christmas Eve blogpost I briefly mentioned the draft stopper that I am making.  (You may have skimmed over that sentence because it was a post about completion of my Winter (AndI’mStillTotallyInLoveWithIt) cowl.)  Anyhoo, this post is all about the draft stopper.

Before I unveil the Striped Stopper, I have to give some background info.

Our livingroom door is one foot away from our front door so any cold air seeping through the letterbox promptly whooshes into the living room via that teeny tiny opening underneath the door. We’ve been using an old towel to try to keep out the arctic air, but that just looks tacky.

Hubby: “Can’t you crochet something for us?”

Me: “Hell yes! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

Hubby: “Because you’re so busy with my blanky. I’m cold now, so I’ll take blanky for now, then you can do the door thing.”

Me: “Okay, but what colour should it be?”

Hubby: “Nothing too bright.”

Me: “Have you met me?!”

Hubby: “Yes. Of course. Well, as long as it doesn’t stand out too much. I trust you.”

….. are you sure about that?

So what did I do? I made a 18 colour striped draft stopper that matches our striped Ikea carpet exactly! If you lay it flat on the carpet, you can’t even see the stopper, that’s how not stand out-ishly good it is.

It looks sooooooo nice against the door.

Even though it’s very bright and striped, it blends in fantastically with the rest of the room.

I used Rowan Handknit Cotton and Drops Paris from my stash and a 4mm hook. You can see the stash, and the carpet, here. I followed the Lionbrand pattern, but added an extra round so that my tube ended up being just a tad wider than theirs. In other words, instead of 36 stitches for a round, I have 42. I obviously also didn’t follow their stripe sequence as I had to keep the width of my stripes the same as my carpet.

I actually finished the crocheting on Boxing Day, but had to wait for the postman to deliver little plastic pellets so that I could stuff it and crochet the end. It’s stuffed with alternating layers of plastic pellets (for weight) and polyester stuffing (as insulation).

Hubby then made the very clever suggestion that we should add velcro strips to the stopper and the door, so that it will stay attached to the bottom of the door even when we LEAVE the room & close the door behind us. Isn’t that genius?

He insisted that he should be the one to have the “privilege” of using the hot glue gun to attach the velcro to the door.  (A glue gun is extremely manly you see, and well, it was his suggestion to add the velcro so it’s only fair that he should be the one to use the glue gun.)

So here we have it. The Striped Stopper, requested by Hubby, executed by Moi and, in an ever so masculine way, improved upon by Hubby.

Identity Crisis blanket Ta Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

07 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern, Ta-daah!

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It’s a long “dah” today, but that’s because it’s proportional to length of time it took me to finish this bad boy*. To wit, 2 years, 1 month, 25 days in the making. Or to put it differently, 785 days / 67,824,000 seconds / 1,130,400 minutes / 18,840 hours / 112 weeks.  (*The link takes you to the post that explains where I got the name Idenity Crisis from. You’ll see… It makes perfect sense.)

To be fair I couldn’t work on it, or should I say “under it”, during the Summer and it a very big blanket. The point is: I finished it and I’m proud of it!

Blanket statistics are as follows:

Yarn: Stylecraft Special DK. I think I used roughly 5 skeins of each colour, but it may be more.

Colours: Plum (maroon), Meadow (green), Denim (dark blue), Parchment (off-white), Cloud Blue (light blue) and Mocha (brown).

Blanket pattern: Spicey Delights by Lionbrand yarns

Border pattern: Border #112

Layout: 72 rows of stripes, one row of 21 4-round granny squares, 20 rows of stripes, one row of 21 4-round granny squares, 20 rows of stripes, one row of 21 4-round granny squares and a final 72 rows of stripes.

This is where it all started. I took this photo on 21 November 2009 – one day after starting the blanket. I can hardly believe the blanket was ever this small!

It hasn’t always been an enjoyable journey though… Here is what I wrote in the Notes of this project on my Ravelry page.

I’m making this afghan to match the Granny and Grandpa square cushions in our bedroom. I had to promise hubby that I won’t use any pink, but that’s a small price to pay to get my hooky way 🙂

I’m using Biscuit and Jam’s Random Stripe Generator. What an amazing tool!!!

31 December 09: I am really getting tired of working on this ginormous blanket. The only thing keeping me going is seeing how it changes as I add more stripes. Thank goodness for the stripe generator!

5 January 2010: I’m starting to resent this blanket cause it just doesn’t want to get bigger even though I already have 72 rows! I hook and hook and hook and it still looks like a really big scarf.

29 May 2010: I’m starting the blanket again, but I’ll be doing 4 round granny squares for the middle section.

30 August 2011: I’m baaaack….

31 December 2011: All rows are finished and the blanket is the size I wanted. Weaving in of the ends and edging left to do.

1 January 2012: All the ends are woven in.

2 January 2012: Added Around the Corner Crochet Border # 112, and I’m done, finish, kaput! 20 November 2009 – 2 January 2012 in the making.

It was all worth it in the end though. Here’s why.


Thank goodness we have only one double bed in our home, otherwise I might just be tempted to make another huge blanket because, all things considered, I would do it again.

On the edge

03 Tuesday Jan 2012

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If you follow me on Facebook, you would have seen that 31 December 2011 was a HUGE day for me: I finished crocheting the (what felt like millions of) rows of the Identity Crisis blanket!!!! No more shells. No more rows. No more colour changes. Done – blanky reached double bed proportions.

This meant that on the first day of 2012 I was weaving in ends. Loads of ends. Luckily Hubby lent a hand in his own, ever so practical, way:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we really could leave loose ends nicely tied into bows? Unfortunately no 😦

2 January 2012 was all about edging along Edie Eckman’s book Around The Corner Crochet (get it, edging along, crocheting an edge :-)). I chose border #112. It’s a nice and simple pattern that wouldn’t draw attention away from the rows and grannies, but still finishes off the blanket nicely. A border is so important for blankets I think. Strangely enough, Lionbrand doesn’t say you should add a border to the Spicy Delights Afghan pattern. I can’t imagine leaving the blanket edge like this: Can you?


First thing I had to do was create a base row of sc all round. Edie suggests three sc for every two dc on your vertical edges. Horizontal rows are easy, you just do a sc in each stitch of the row. For the corners, use three sc and put a stitch marker in the second/middle sc of the group of three.

The second row of my edging, which is in fact the first row of the pattern, I initially had in maroon, but had to undo it all because the maroon was just too dark to stand out between the navy rows. See what I mean?

This is the white row that replaced the maroon.

Then, the last row of the pattern is dc’s in the sc of your previous row, and three dc’s in each space between.

This is the result. Border #112 done and dusted. However….. I felt it needed something extra. Just something to finish off properly.

So this is what I did. A simple sc row of maroon. It just pulls everything together and I get to use the maroon that I had to undo earlier. Result!

That’s it. With the border on, I was done!!!!

If you want to see the finished product you can have a look at the Facebook page. It’s not the best photo (it’s a bit yellow due to the electric bedroom light) but I was so excited I just had to take a picture. This weekend I will make blanky pose for its photoshoot in lovely natural light and take loads of pictures of all angles. I will also recap the pattern and yarn that I used.

I never thought I’d see the day when I can blog about woven ends and border for this bad boy. I’m so happy it’s done, proud of myself for seeing it through, and I love to see the blanket being used.

I definitely want to make another blanket – smaller!!!! – because I like the idea of crochet blankets to keep friends and family warm and cozy. There are such a lot of patterns and yarn to choose from…..

What am I saying?! Another blanket?! This one isn’t even 24 hours old! I think I just got a shot of the hormone that mothers release straight after childbirth. You know, the one that makes you forget all the pain and agony of childbirth so that you only focus on your beautiful baby? I think it applies to huge crochet projects as well.

I must be….

on the edge of crochet madness.

On the edge

03 Tuesday Jan 2012

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 If you follow me on Facebook, you would have seen that 31 December 2011 was a HUGE day for me: I finished crocheting the (what felt like millions of) rows of the Identity Crisis blanket!!!! No more shells. No more rows. No more colour changes. Done – blanky reached double bed proportions.

This meant that on the first day of 2012 I was weaving in ends. Loads of ends. Luckily Hubby lent a hand in his own, ever so practical, way:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we really could leave loose ends nicely tied into bows? Unfortunately no 😦

2 January 2012 was all about edging along Edie Eckman’s book Around The Corner Crochet (get it, edging along, crocheting an edge :-)). Tou can find a link to the book on the right of this page. I chose border #112. It’s a nice and simple pattern that wouldn’t draw attention away from the rows and grannies, but still finishes off the blanket nicely. A border is so important for blankets I think.  Strangely enough, Lionbrand doesn’t say you should add a border to the Spicy Delights Afghan pattern. I can’t imagine leaving the blanket edge like this: Can you?


First thing I had to do was create a base row of sc all round. Edie suggests three sc for every two dc on your vertical edges. Horizontal rows are easy, you just do a sc in each stitch of the row.  For the corners, use three sc and put a stitch marker in the second/middle sc of the group of three.

The second row of my edging, which is in fact the first row of the pattern, I initially had in maroon, but had to undo it all because the maroon was just too dark to stand out between the navy rows.  See what I mean?

This is the white row that replaced the maroon.

Then, the last row of the pattern is dc’s in the sc of your previous row, and three dc’s in each space between.

This is the result. Border #112 done and dusted. However….. I felt it needed something extra. Just something to finish off properly.

So this is what I did. A simple sc row of maroon. It just pulls everything together and I get to use the maroon that I had to undo earlier. Result!

That’s it. With the border on, I was done!!!!

If you want to see the finished product you can have a look at the Facebook page. It’s not the best photo (it’s a bit yellow due to the electric bedroom light) but I was so excited I just had to take a picture. This weekend I will make blanky pose for its photoshoot in lovely natural light and take loads of pictures of all angles. I will also recap the pattern and yarn that I used.

I never thought I’d see the day when I can blog about woven ends and border for this bad boy. I’m so happy it’s done, proud of myself for seeing it through, and I love to see the blanket being used.

I definitely want to make another blanket – smaller!!!! – because I like the idea of crochet blankets to keep friends and family warm and cozy. There are such a lot of patterns and yarn to choose from…..

What am I saying?! Another blanket?! This one isn’t even 24 hours old! I think I just got a shot of the hormone that mothers release straight after childbirth. You know, the one that makes you forget all the pain and agony of childbirth so that you only focus on your beautiful baby? I think it applies to huge crochet projects as well.

I must be….

on the edge of crochet madness.