Category Archives: Pattern

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!!!

Crochet on TV (The Middle)

12 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in As seen on TV, Pattern

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A few weeks ago in The Middle Season 3, episode 12 I fell in love with yet another crochet afghan. This show really is a treasure trove of crochet blankets!

I love the zigzag, retro, colourful look of the blanket on Sue’s bed.

I’ve been searching high and low for something even remotely close to this zig zag pattern and today I found it in Robyn Chachula’s Crochet Visual Encyclopedia. I paged through the book in my local Waterstones during my lunch break. When I saw it, I almost screamed out loud – on the inside I was punching the air. 🙂 I had a feeling that a stitch dictionary / encyclopedia would contain the stitch and it did! I then, very sneakily, tried to take a picture of the page so that I could post it on the blog for you. I returned  ran back to the office, eager to download the photo from my camera phone only to find it wasn’t there! Covert operations are obviously not my forte….

But fear not ye hookers, the Gods of Crochet were on my side: a quick Google search produced the exact pattern, and more!

This link takes you to the US Amazon page for the Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia. The bonus is that at the bottom of the page, there are sample patterns for you to try, and it includes “Malawi” which I think is the closest match to Sue’s blanket!!! How cool is that!?

I’m also going to update my post of 22 December to include a link to the “Double Crochet Track Seam” and  “Chain Space Seam” sample patterns, as more ways to join the grannies like in the Dooms Day Killer’s victim’s  blanket.

In the same episode of The Middle, Mike is sitting under a grey and red crochet afghan. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate the stitch used in this one. In my defence, the blanket doesn’t appear for very long so I can’t get a very good look at it. If however you think you know what pattern they used, please let me know!

I think I’ll have to invest in the Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia in the very near future (it really is a brilliant book!). Covert phone operations and Google searches won’t snip the mustard yarn* for much longer….

*my crochet version of “cut the mustard”

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.

Pickles and jams to end off 2011

31 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in My ramblings, Other people's crochet, Pattern

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Thanks to a free magazine (albeit from September 2010) at my local train station ticket office, I have the pattern for Nicki Trench’s Jam Pot Covers which is on the cover of her book Cute and Easy Crochet, to share with you today!

Inside this little ticket office…

was this magazine…

with the pattern for these beauties…

To print the pattern, click here and it will open in Acrobat as a .pdf file.

Happy New Year all!!! I hope the only pickles and jams you find yourself in, are the ones you crochet covers for.

May it be a hooktastic 2012 for one and all!

Proper retro

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Etsy, My ramblings, Pattern

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I recently found a selection of vintage crochet patterns on Etsy, all incorporating granny squares. I love granny squares, but some of these patterns are quite… well, see for yourself.

Will I buy the pattern, make and wear this? Maybe:

Will I buy the pattern, make and wear this? Only if you pay me:

Source: etsy.com via Natasja on Pinterest

 

Will I buy the pattern, make and wear this? Not even if you pay me:

Source: etsy.com via Natasja on Pinterest

What do you think of these bad boys? Would you? Wouldn’t you?

 

Beautiful blankets from Lionbrand Yarns

26 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Other people's crochet, Pattern

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I totally fell in love with these afghans from Lionbrand Yarns! Especially the top one. It’s so so so pretty! I wouldn’t even change the colours, it’s perfect as it is.

You can find the pattern for the Wavy Blocks Throw pattern here, and the Garden Patch Granny Afghan pattern, here. As with all free Lionbrand Yarns patterns, you will have to create an user account and log in to access the pattern.

 

A change of plan and a Ta-daaaah

24 Saturday Dec 2011

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

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If you are a fan of crocheTime on Facebook, you would have seen my public declaration of yesterday, saying that I will not finish the Winter Scarf, but rather finish the Identity Crisis blanket before 2012 (it’s been coming dragging along since 20 November 2009 so it really should not have to see 2012 without a border and ends to woven in). I really really really planned to do it this way but things change…

The problem lies therein that the blanket is already big enough for two people to comfortably sit under, or one person to snuggle under from head to toe… more often than not that one person is Hubby. Case and point last night. I had packed away the scarf,  eager and ready to work exclusively on the Identity Crisis blanket but he refused to give it to me! “You can find something else to crochet, I’m sitting under my blanky”. I had to laugh. “My blanky”?! At least I know that when I do (one day) finish it, it will be loved and used.

Back to the scarf then.

I don’t think I’ve given the details on the blog, so here it is. I used Garnstudio Drops Delight in shade no. 10 and myPicot Openwork and Lace pattern no. 2015 with a 3.5mm hook. I can’t remember how many stitches I cast on, but it was quite a lot as the scarf is very wide. It was the width that actually lead me to think that it will work better as a cowl as I’d be able to twist it better around my neck and over my chest, than I would with a scarf. It seemed a waste to have two wide, very warm scarf ends just hanging down the front!

So this is the result.


Strangely enough it reminds me a lot of the Annie’s Attic cowl wrap I wanted to recreate. Looks like I kinda did, without even trying!

This is such a lovely warm cowl! I doesn’t feel heavy or restrictive, just warm and snuggly.

As you can see from my earlier post, it made its debut earlier today in Surbiton and I loved wearing it!

I would say that it’s off to work on the Identity Crisis blanket now but I’m not. Hubby asked for a “draft stopper” for the livingroom.  Let’s hope I can wizz through the Lion Brand’s Striped Draft Stopper pattern quickly enough to finish the blanket before 2012 but past experience has taught me that I shouldn’t hold my breath.