Category Archives: My ramblings

My crochet hero

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

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My crochet hero isn’t a single person. In fact it’s not a person at all. I’ts the yarn company Garnstudio, DROPS Design.

They’re my hero for having 529 crochet patterns on their website. For free. That’s just amazing! Okay, I know it’s in their interest to supply patterns to use with their yarn, but still. It’s free! They also don’t have any guarantee that everyone that downloads a pattern, will use Garnstudio yarn, so I think they’re super nice.

When you visit their website you can search for a pattern using this link. Just choose “crochet” as your pattern type. You can of course narrow down the search further if you’re looking for something specific.

As for their yarn: I’m a huge fan. They have an excellent range of yarns and each brand of yarn has a huge, oh so lovely, colour range to choose from.

I’ve used Drops Delight, Drops Paris, Drops BabyAlpaca Silk and Drops Cotton Viscose and I love them all.

I think my favourite has to be the BabyAlpaca Silk that I used for the Whispers Cardigan. The cardigan is a Garnstudio pattern, so it was a very good match and I think it’s part of the reason why my cardigan came out so lovely. The pattern and the yarn were definitely made for each other.

Drops yarn is also extremely affordable which is definitely heroic.

The DROPS Price policy is to always be 20-30 % below the general market price level. To make sure our customers benefit from this, the DROPS yarn is always marketed with a price guarantee, we call the max price. Max price is a guarantee from our retailers to our customers that the DROPS products are sold at these prices, or less.

Not only do the Garnstudio website have all the lovely patterns, they have crochet tutorial videos. The videos are without commentary so anyone, no matter what language, can follow the videos and learn something new.  There are five pages of videos! I especially like this technique of joining granny squares with a zig zag pattern.

What more do you want? Lots of beautiful crochet patterns, videos to refer to when you get stuck and an amazing selection of yarn at a very reasonable price.

Garnstudio DROPS Design = my hero.

P.S. From 1 – 30 May, 24 of the Garnstudio Drops yarns are on sale at 30% discount (see the list of yarn and discounted prices here) and until 30 April Drops Cotton Light is 25% off. What did I say about affordable yarn?!

Go forth and purchase ye Hookers.

Colour Lover

23 Monday Apr 2012

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I’m a colour lover. No doubt about it. More is more, the brighter the better, if the colour combo gives you a headache that’s good I say.

Look at my stash of cotton yarn. Need I say more?

Even in the way I dress, I just HAVE to add colour. Today for instance I didn’t want to think about what to wear (we all get those days don’t we) so I’m wearing black trousers and a black shirt…. with turquoise shoes and earrings. I just can’t help it – I need to add a bit of colour.

I do have a palette that I instinctively stick to when I buy clothes or yarn for wearables. Mostly blues, greens and purples. By now my wardrobe is so colour co-ordinated that I can go into any shop and buy what I’m naturally drawn to – cool colours like blue, green, purple – and find that it will always match at least three other items in my wardrobe so I can mix and match to my heart’s content. I really love that! If you want to get technical, that means I like to dress in a Analogous color scheme.

When it comes to choosing a colour palette for a crochet item, key to me, is contrast. Colours have to “pop”.

Almost every colour combo in the squares of this Roses and Daisies cushion “pops” against the very light grey background and against each other

As I like contrast, and I’m naturally drawn to green/blue/purple I sometimes have to use warm colours like red, pink, yellow or orange to create the contrast although those are not colours that I especially like. I especially don’t like pink so I try to use as little as possible of it in my own crochet.

However, for the granny square cushion I’m making for Lynn Holland I’ve used three shades of pink for contrast. I have to say it does work well. On it’s own pink is a no-no for me, but mixed up in a rainbow of others, it does serve its contrasting purpose.

See how the pink makes the colour next to it stand out? I just love how that works!

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If you still don’t think I’m a colour lover, check out my nails. Case. And point.

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Knitting and Crochet Blog Week

19 Thursday Apr 2012

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As from Monday I will be blogging every day as part of Eskimimimakes’ Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. If you want to take part as well, you can find all the information here.

The blog week is in its third year and this year there will even be prizes! I’m donating a clock and a copy of the clock pattern, which I’m very excited about.

Here’s a list of all the topics that I, and numerous other craft bloggers, will be blogging about next week.  Each day, and therefor each topic, has a tag allocated to it. You can type the tag into Google to find all the blog posts that relate to that day’s topic. Nifty innit?

If you have a blog, join in the fun! If not, type in any of the tags into Google  to find other interesting knit and crochet blogs for you to follow (once Blog Week has commenced of course).

It’s going to a fun week next week!

Versatile Blogger Award

29 Thursday Mar 2012

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I received a Versatile Blogger award yesterday. Yeah!!!

I was given the award by Sara from the Sincerely,Sara blog.  Thank you so much Sara! Sara is a crafty wife, mum and student. (Where she finds the time to fit in crafting heaven knows!) We both crochet and blog about it – we even have the same WordPress theme for our blogs! Her blog is a pleasure to read. Do yourself a favour and add her to your blogroll.

Now that I have been awarded this coveted award, I have to do a couple of things. The Rules state:

  1.  Thank the person who gave you this award.
  2. Include a link to their blog.
  3.  Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
  4. Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award
  5. Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

I’ve done 1 and 2, so here is 3 and 4.

The 15 blogs that I nominate for an award, and I follow regularly are:

Now for number 5. I’ve already told you 10 things about myself here, so I really had to pick my brains to find seven more, but here goes.

  1. I really don’t like roses or carnations.
  2. I really do like sweet peas and tulips.
  3. I’m fascinated by giraffes. Lately I’ve been seeing them all around in photos, clothing, on the internet etc. Never seen one in real life though.
  4. I have only one pair of black socks. All my other socks (and there are many) are bright & patterned.
  5. For his 60th birthday, John and I are giving my Dad a 10 day holiday with us here in the UK. It will be the first time he visits us in our home – we’ve been here for eight years so you can imagine the excitement levels.
  6. I think John makes the best tea and he thinks I make the best coffee. A conversation about hot drinks usually goes like this: “Would you like a cup of tea?” “Oooh, yes please! Would you like a coffee?” “Oooh, yes please! Let’s go.” Off we both go to the kitchen to make each other a tea / coffee. I think it must look really weird to outsiders: he makes tea, I make coffee and when it’s done we switch the mugs.
  7. I have a playlist on my iPod called “Crochet tunes”. The Script, Keane, Adele, Nickleback, Kings of Leon and Train gets me in a hooky mood.

I hope I could introduce you to at least one new blog and that you weren’t too bored by the seven random things about myself.

Thanks again Sara for the award 🙂

Me. Wrong? No way.

26 Monday Mar 2012

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I don’t like being wrong. Most people don’t. Luckily, at 34, I’m old enough to know that at most times I will be wrong and then I’ll readily admit it, but it has to be proven that I was wrong. (No point admitting something when there’s a chance that I could have been right – that’s just losing face for no reason!)

In the spirit of being an adult, and admitting to mistakes, I have to admit that I’ve been proven wrong on two fronts. Both relate to my latest crochet project: The Wearable.

If I admit it, that means it’s been proven, so take heed fellow hookers, don’t make the same mistakes I did.

Mistake no. 1: Gauge swatches are a waste of time.

The pattern (Whispers by Garnstudio), states

DROPS CROCHET HOOK size 3.5 mm/E/4 – or size needed to get 4 x 4 repetitions = 10 x 10 cm / 4” x 4”

I knew this, what looks like a maths equation, is the gauge guide. I found a couple of videos on YouTube and blog posts that kept on saying how extremely important correct gauge is when you make something that needs to fit well. Got it. Need to make gauge swatch. Need to fit 4 repeats into 10cm.

I started with the recommended 3.5 mm hook. Got 5 repeats in 10cm. One website said that when that happens I need to go up a hook size, the other website said I had to go down. So I did it again with a 3 mm hook. Same thing: 5 repeats. Got out my favourite 4 mm hook and lo and behold I managed 4 repeats! Yeah!!!

With the 4mm hook I made the foundation chain of 132 stitches for size M. It looked a bit too long. Maybe a lot too long, so I measured the chain.

The chain was 72 cm, which is basically the width of the finished jacket in size XXXL according to this diagram! What the hell?! My size is meant to be 53 cm wide. That’s a foundation chain of almost 20cm too long!

Fear not, it’s just the foundation chain. I undid it, and started again with the 3.5 mm hook. Guess what. My 132 stitches made a chain of….53 cm. Spot on!

So, to me, at that stage at least, it meant that my gauge swatch exercise was a waste of time: all I had to do was make the foundation chain for my size and it would have told me if I had the right hook size – WRONG!

After hooking for 30cm, the back piece had “shrunk” in width to be less than size S, even if I stretched it out! I needed to make bigger stitches… which means a larger crochet hook…which means my current gauge was wrong…. which means the gauge swatch was right. Bummer.

Lessons learned:

  • An open, lacey pattern will shrink in width the longer it gets so a long foundation chain is not an indication of finished width.
  • I do not crochet at the same gauge as the Garnstudio people (why would I think I do? Oh yes, because I’m never wrong.)
  • Do a gauge swatch.
  • Do as the gauge swatch says!
  • Frogging 30 cm is much faster than crocheting 30 cm.

2. The pattern is wrong

At the 30cm mark I not only realised the width of my back piece was wrong, but also that it was too long. My pattern stated:

Continue to work diagram M.1 (1st row is now done, beg on 2nd row) = 19-21-23-25-27-29 repetitions. When piece measures 10 and 20 cm / 4″ and 8″ – Read MEASURING TIP, dec ½ repetition in each side

but I read the “and” as an “or”. Don’t ask – I don’t know how that happened. In my mind that sentence didn’t make any sense ergo the pattern must be wrong and I chose to ignore the 10 cm instruction. – WRONG!

I also read “Continue to work in diagram M.1 = 19-21-23-25-27-29 repetitions” as “crochet 21 rows of the M.1 pattern”, in stead of “you should have 21 repeats in a row”. It was this bit that lead me to Ravelry to ask someone for help. I wanted to know how the pattern writers could ask me to crochet 21 rows to reach 10 and or 20 cm, when I was only at 19 rows and already at 30cm long and I haven’t even started decreasing for the armholes yet (hoping of course that someone would say the pattern is wrong).

The lovely Imke Healy answered my question within the hour. Thank goodness for fellow crocheters willing to help out strangers with stupid questions! I’m so grateful to her! She didn’t say the pattern was wrong, but rather said I would have to start  over and pointed out the error of my ways. Tough love.

(By the way, check out her blogpost here. She’s already blocking her cardigan and even modified the sleeves! Strange but true fact: we share the same birthday and are both making blue cardigans. Freaky.)

Lessons learned:

  • Read the pattern.
  • “and” does not mean “or”
  • The chances that a crochet pattern is wrong, is much much much smaller than the chances that I’m reading it wrong.
  • Ask for help.
  • Read the pattern!

Lessons learnt and mistakes admitted. Here’s hoping the front and the sleeves go smoothly.

On a philosophical note, and to make myself feel better, here’s a nice quote.

I have an Ideas

23 Friday Mar 2012

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No, I didn’t get the grammar wrong on the title of this blog. I really do have an Ideas: a digital copy of the April issue of the South African craft+decor+food+entertaining magazine, Ideas.

The fact that I have a magazine really isn’t blog worthy, so why am I telling you about this you may ask. It’s because…..

In their “Web Inspiration” article (giving tips on how to create a blog) they list 14 of their favourite websites and blogs, and crocheTime is one of those 14! See, there I am at the bottom right of the page:

I was blown away when I found out! Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that a huge magazine like Ideas (they also publish the magazine in Afrikaans) would know about little ‘ole me, and not only know about me, but think my blog is worthy of a mention in their list of favourites!
Some of the other websites & blogs they like are Pinterest, The Pioneer Woman, Craftzine and Ravelry so I’m really amongst the Big Ones.

To any new readers from South Africa: thanks for looking me up and popping in! To the person in charge of deciding which blogs to include in the article: thank you so much!

Jazzing up a skirt

15 Thursday Mar 2012

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So I have this thing for Boden A-line printed skirts, right. I already own three, yet every Winter I get a craving for another colourful, patterned skirt. It only happens in Winter, as Boden’s Winter A-line skirts are of a thicker cotton and the lining is silk (okay, probably a shiny polyester but it looks like silk) that doesn’t cling to tights. Their Summer skirts have a cotton lining that does not work well with tights (if you are as white pasty as I am you need flesh coloured tights in Summer) so I only buy their Winter skirts.

This year, the craving was for the Navy Flower Power skirt. I loved it so much, I even pinned it one of my Pinterest boards the moment I saw it online.

boden flower skirt

It’s as if it was made for me. The colour, the design, the everything! Only problem is that it was a bit pricey at £45 so I waited for the Winter sales. And I waited, and I waited.  Two months ago the little voice(s) in my head said “Go look on the Boden site. They might have a Sale on.” The voices were right. There it was. In my size for £24.50!

In real life it’s even more beautiful, but for some reason Boden decided to make the skirt about 2cm shorter than all their previous A-line printed skirts. That’s not a lot, but when you have ugly, white pasty knees, a knee length skirt that hangs ON your knee is not good. It has to be at least below your knee. What is a hooker to do? Oh I know! Crochet a pretty edge along the hem of the lining !!!!!!! Problem solved, and skirt improved.

Out comes the Skip-Stitch rotary cutter and trusty Around the Corner Crochet Borders book (you can find a link to the book on the right of this page). I chose Border No. 45 and green Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo that I got on sale a while ago.

Here’s what I did:

1. I Used the Skip-Stitch blade to make the holes. One quick swipe by hubby while I keep the lining flat, and it’s done.

2. Next step is to make blanket stitches to give a base to crochet on. It’s perfectly all right to skip step. no. 1 if you use a sharp needle for the blanket stitches, but I wanted my holes to be evenly spaced, so I used the rotary cutter and then did the blanket stitches.

3. Then a row of sc. I managed to fit in two sc between each blanket stitch.(I blog in US crochet terms. For a guide to the difference between US and UK crochet stitches, see this handy cut-out by Freshstitches.)

4. As I need the edge to peek out below the hem of the skirt, and the lining is shorter than the skirt, I made 2 rows of *trebles, chain* to quickly make up the 2 cm difference between the lining and the hem.

5. One more row of sc, making one sc in the top of the treble and one in the space between two trebles.

By this stage the edge is already peeking out under the hem of the skirt.

6. Here’s where I started following the pattern for Border No. 45. It was at this point that I stopped for the skirt that I showed you last week.

7. This is the full edging, looking at the wrong side of the crochet. You can see where the edge of the skirt ends, which means I’ve added 4cm to the length, more than making up the 2cm it was too short!

And here it is, as seen from above (please excuse the ugly carpet. I took the photo in the office this morning.)

Ta-daaah, a customised Boden skirt!


Some notes:

You can use any edging / border pattern for your skirt. As long as you at least do steps no. 2 and 3, you can move on to any type of fancy frilly prettiness.

You can also do a crochet edge beautification of a skirt, straight onto the hem of the skirt if it doesn’t have a lining. I like the idea of the edge peeking out underneath, but I know most skirts don’t have linings. The only thing you will have to be aware of, is that your blanket stitching will be visible, so it’s important that those blanket stitches are evenly spaced.

In the first photo of this blogpost, I laid out two crochet hooks on the carpet. That’s because with the first skirt, I used two sizes of crochet hook. I used a 4mm hook up to step no. 5, and switched to a 5 mm hook for the edging. I was using Rowand Handknit cotton for that skirt, but seeing as the Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo is finer than the Handknit cotton, I didn’t need to switch crochet hooks for this skirt.

Speaking of Baby Bamboo. Can I just say: Oh My Goodness! It’s the softest, loveliest yarn ever! My brain can’t work out how bamboo fibers can be turned into yarn, much less into the baby snuggly softness of this yarn.  I’ts bamboo! How is that possible?! Either way, I’m definitely going to use it again for something bigger. Definitely!

As you may have guessed, the skirt jazzing will not stop here. I have two more Boden skirts. Admittedly they are the right length, but a little crochet loving around the hemline is always welcome don’t you think? 😉

Breakfast in a treehouse

12 Monday Mar 2012

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Have you ever had breakfast in a treehouse? I have, and it was magical!

Three friends and I went to Fanny’s Farm Shop near Reigate in Surrey on Saturday.

Fanny’s Farm Shop was created in 1979 by Fanny Maiklem, selling her glut of runner beans, courgettes, lettuces, dahlias and gladioli on a barrow outside her shop. Nowadays Fanny’s Farm Shop is known for its’ fabulous clotted cream teas, delicious locally made cakes, award winning marmalade, honey, eggs and even marmalade sausges.

We were booked in for the 10 am breakfast slot in the treehouse. Breakfast consisted of two of the most delicious, steaming, fresh from the oven, croissants and a roll and a hot drink. Spreads included honey, jams, peanut butter, Marmite and chocolate spread. The jams, honey and peanut butter are local Surrey produce. If you book the 12 noon, 2pm or 4pm sessions you can choose from set menus that include scones, sandwiches and cake – literally High Tea, high in a tree.

Even without food and drink, our hour in the treehouse would have been something to remember. Its cozy, quirky, rustic, private and pretty all in one. You never seem to get used to the fact that the table you’re sitting at, is built around three tree trunks!

The whole farm shop is area is filled with the same quirky, rustic, pretty things. It really is sensory overload. I couldn’t walk two steps without having to take a photo.

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As a note, the milk jug in the treehouse was covered with a doilie so there’s the justification for sharing my treehouse breakfast with you.

If you are ever in the Surrey area, a visit to Fanny’s Farm Shop is a must!