Category Archives: Ta-daah!

Helmien’s infinity scarf

11 Saturday Feb 2012

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Helmien and I have known each other almost 20 years. We were in High School together in South Africa, went our different ways after High School and then in 2009 – 14 years later – I bumped into her at London Waterloo station.  What’s the odds, and what a happy coincidence! We are obvioulsly meant to be in each other’s lives no matter where on earth we are.

It was for Helmien that I made the second infinity scarf. She saw mine last month and asked whether I would make her one as well. Of course I would!! I used the same brand of yarn, Garnstudio Drops Delight, but her scarf is in shade no. 15 (mine was shade no. 10). I used two balls of shade no. 10 that I had left over for Helmien’s scarf, because she really loved the bright greeny-blue shades.  (By the way, until 29 February, Drops Delight is discounted by 25%. Just saying.)

I also followed a MyPicot Openwork and Lace pattern like I did for mine, but for Helmien’s infinity scarf I used pattern no. 2030. I can highly recommend the MyPicot patterns. Seriously. Give it a go.

Doesn’t she look beautiful?!

Here we are in our (almost matching) scarfs.

Love you, my friend!

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.

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.