Five blankets for dialysis patients

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Natasja in Crochet For Kidneys, Part 1

Tags

crochet along, crochet blanket, Kidney Research UK event

Today is the day people! John is delivering five of the seven blankets to the dialysis unit of the Royal London Hospital. Do you know what today also is? It’s the one year anniversary of the kidney transplant operation that took place at the Royal London Hospital! John will be at the hospital for his post-transplant one year check-up. What better day to hand over blankets of hope to those suffering from kidney failure?!

It was a bit of a rush to get a decent amount of blankets finished, but we did it. Jane, Tammy and Liz each took a bunch of squares home on the 9th of November and crocheted them together. Thank you so much ladies, you really saved the day!

Please excuse the badly lit photos below. I didn’t get time over the weekend to photograph the photos properly. I rolled and tied up the blankets with purple ribbons last night after dinner and John set off to the hospital at 9 am, so this is probably the only proper photos we will get off the blankets.

Squares joined by Liz

Squares joined by Tammy

Squares joined by Jane Czaja

Squares joined by Natasja

I made these A5 laminate cards for each blanket:

Blanket tag

I felt we needed to give the recipient of the blankets the history behind their blanket. Without the context of who made it, where they live, when it was made and why we made for them, it could just as well be a shop bought Primark blanket. The tag also includes the care instructions.

It feels strange that this project is coming to an end. I still have two blankets to join up which I will post to the Royal London Hospital, but today is the special day that we’ve all been aiming for – handing over of the blankets to those who need it most. I can’t wait to hear from John how it went. We don’t know how the blankets will be handed out or who decides who gets a blanket and who doesn’t. Hopefully John will be able to take some photos. I will keep you posted, or you can go over to twoguysonekidney.blogspot.co.uk a bit later today to read John’s post about today.

To each and every one of you who made a square, posted it to me, showed up at the village hall on the 9th November and most of all for just being such a great buns of people

THANK YOU SO SO SO SO SO SO MUCH

I’d also like to take the opportunity to tell you that……

we’ll be making more blankets!!! This has been such a brilliant team effort I want to do it again! I have a few things lined up for the next two weeks that will keep me busy, but before Christmas I promise to let you in on my plans. I can tell you that we will be voting, we won’t be doing squares and it will be a good stash busting project.

Oooh, the suspense!

Watch this space hookers!

Crochet on TV (Orange Is The New Black)

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by Natasja in As seen on TV

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

crochet, crochet blanket, Orange is the new black, TV

In August 2013 Kyli Rhynalds contacted me with a plea for help. She had seen a crocheted blanket on Episode 12 of Orange Is The New Black. She emailed to say “I HAVE to recreate! I’m sure you understand that need. 🙂 Do you think you can help?” Of course I understand. The blanket is absolutely beautiful! I seriously had gooseflesh when I saw it. It looks so femine, lacy and soft. I can imagine that prison inmates would fight about this blanket. Hey, I’m a free womand and I’ll fight for it!

I don’t have a lot of photos to go by, but between Kyli and me we figured out that two motifs from Pierrot Yarns can be combined to make a very similar blanket.

For the yarn, stick to light grey and two shades of a peachy-pink in Chunky or Aran with an appropriate size crochet hook.

For the grey octagons, I found Colour the Season Coasters, which is a charted Japanese pattern from Pierrot Yarns. Click on the “direct link to pattern PDF” hyperlink in the Ravelry description to open a pdf file for the crochet chart. For the flowers I think this is the closest flower motif. It’s also a charted Japanese octagon pattern from Pierrot Yarns so it should fit it with the grey octagons. If you look at the first photo, you’ll see that the spaces between two motifs are filled with 5-chain links. These 5-chain links are used in the grey octagon motif, so just keep adding those 5-chain links around the edges of your motifs to make up the empty spaces and join the motifs together.

In the second photo you will see how the blanket is edged. You basically have to fill in the spaces between the motifs around the edges, with more 5-chain links, and use (US) double crochet / (UK) treble crochet stitches to make the sides square. I think you would have to do like they did by making wide borders, otherwise your blanket may be too floppy. The wide border is what makes it keep its shape.

This blog post is certainly not a pattern for the Orange Is The New Black blanket – you’ll have to play around a bit and figure it out as you go, but hopefully the two motifs I found can point you in the right direction.

*If you need help with reading Japanese crochet charts, I list handy websites in the last paragraph of this post.

Granny square blanket Ta-daaaah!

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Ta-daah!

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

crochet, crochet blanket, granny square, granny square afghan

All done! Nicole’s granny square blanket is ready to adorn the new couch in her new home. I had a great time making this granny square blanket and I’ll do it again in a heartbeat!

The border had to round off the blanket and be understated enough not to distract from the granny squares. I didn’t do anything fancy; just 4 rounds of shells and a SC row, but I included two colours. Picking only two colours out of 15 was tough! I changed my mind a hundred times. Even when I had settled on two colours, I still had to decide which one to use for the shell row and which for the SC row. So many choices! In the end John helped me settle on bright turquoise and bright purple. We worked out that the blanket looked best with the darkest colour for the absolute final row so that narrowed things down quickly.

Here you can see the blanket in its full glory. Do the rounds of each granny and the square arrangement look random? I planned it that way you know 😉

The nitty gritty of the blanket:

Yarn: Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK colour pack from Deramores. I used all the colours in the pack, except Pink. The grey is Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK in shade 814 – Light Grey Mix. The Deramores pack is a brilliant idea and the key to the success of this blanket I think.
Hook: 4 mm
Pattern: 70 traditional granny squares consisting of 6 rounds each, arranged 7 wide x 10 long. The 6th row of each granny is done in Light Grey.
Joining method: My Rose Valley’s Join-as-you-go method.
Border: Two rows of granny stripe shells in Light Grey, a row in Bright Turquoise, a row in Light Grey and then finally a row of SC in Bright Purple. To get the border to lie flat, I used Bunny Mummy’s technique that she explains here. I also followed Lucy’s tip on steam blocking acrylic yarn so that the final SC row wouldn’t curl up. It worked liked a charm!
Finished size: 140cm x 96 cm
Time spent: I started on the first Bank Holiday Monday in May, and finished on the second Bank Holiday Monday in May, so 22 days.

Liezel and I will be meeting Nicole on the 15th of June to hand over the blanket. Liezel came along because it was through Liezel’s Instagram feed that Nicole found me and asked me to crochet the granny square blanket for her. I’ve never met Nicole, and Liezel has only met her once. Can you believe it?! The power of Instagram, iPhones and mutual friends is a thing of beauty!

Nicole, I hope the love and joy in each crochet stitch will bring you years of snuggly happiness and blessings in your new home.

Happy granny squares

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

crochet, crochet blanket, granny square, granny square afghan

Don’t these colourful granny squares just make your heart sing? I certainly does mine! I was dancing, literally dancing, around these 70 squares on Sunday. They give me such a happy buzz!!!

I had to lay out the 70 squares on my striped carpet so that I could arrange them before doing their 6th and final, join-as-you-go round in grey. There’s that planning randomness again…. This time I didn’t have a structured plan like I had for making the granny squares, I just played with my squares until they felt right. John was sitting on the couch with me and my excitement even spilled over to him. By the end, he was also squinting to see if the red and yellow was spread out evenly, rearranging squares because “that corner looks a bit dull” or “I think you need more red over here”. Seems like no-one can resist the charms of the humble granny square.

At the bottom of the photo below you can see the first row of seven granny squares I joined together with the grey yarn. It’s absolutely amazing the difference that round of grey makes to my zingy granny squares. The colours calm down immediately; it’s like giving Ritalin to an ADHD child.

I really can’t wait to see how it will look when I’ve joined all the granny squares with the grey. I’m sooooo excited! Honestly I am. Just typing this post and look at the photos again makes me buzz with joy.

A good ending for this post would be for me to now say I need a Ritalin to calm me down, but I like feeling excited about my crochet – why would I want to change that? It’s a blessing when your craft gives you such fulfilment. I sincerely hope your craft has you bustling with merriment, the way crochet does me.

Atlantic Waves ripple blanket Ta-daaaah!

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Ta-daah!

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Around the corner crochet, blanket, crochet, crochet blanket, crochet border, crochet chart, crochet pattern, ripple

Ooo, wee this ta-daaah post has been a very long time coming. It’s been a draft post since February 2013! Shock horror. Hopefully you will understand why I have been hanging on to this one for so long, when you hear my ~~excuse~~ reasoning.

You see, the Atlantic Waves ripple blanket is inspired by the sea and made for someone who loves the sea. Hence, it is only fitting that I should photograph it on a beach of some sort. Seeing as the English weather have been grey and cold for, what feels like, a million years, I couldn’t go to the beach to photograph the blanket.

Luckily I have been on a South African holiday for a week…. my family is from Cape Town which means we are surrounded by water and encased in blue skies and sunshine…. and the recipient of the blanket is my Dad…. so I managed to finally take the photos just a few days ago!

There’s just a slight problem. My Dad and I went on a roadtrip to Cape Agulhas (where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet) on Wednesday morning. We drove the whole day and was only just able to catch the last rays of sun at the southern most point of Africa.

That meant that the next day had to be the day of The Seaside Photoshoot. That was also the one day out of my 10-day holiday that it rained. It basically looked like Britain. Gggggrrrrr. Hey-ho, my Dad and I now have a good story to tell about The Wet And Windy Photoshoot. Here you can see me, wind-swept and wet taking photos of his blanket. Oh the things you do in the name of crochet!

More about the blanket.

Almost everyone that crochets knows Lucy of Attic 24’s easy ripple blanket. Lovely at it is, I didn’t want to make a Lucy ripple, but I did want to make a ripple. The term “ripple” or “wave pattern” always evoke images of water, the sea, waves breaking and water receding against a shoreline to me. It just felt right that I should use this pattern for my Dad’s blanket seeing as he loves the ocean and he loves blue.

I wanted my ripple / wave pattern to be a little different and special, with texture and lots of interest. I paged through the Crochet Visual Encyclopedia and immediately fell in love with this pattern.

Guess what this ripple pattern is called. Atlantic Wave! The perfect pattern for my sea theme ripple blanket! The raised Fpdc adds the texture I was looking for and enhances the 3D effect of my dark to light to dark colour sequence. (It amazes me that they used a green yarn to demonstrate a sea themed pattern… strange don’t you think?)

To strengthen the sea inspiration, I used shades of blue ranging from navy to powder blue, and cream. I didn’t want the cream and navy to be next to each other as the colour contrast would draw too much attention, so I decided to go from dark to light and back to dark etc. That way I get a beautiful colour rhythm, gradual colour changes and a 3D optical illusion.

In my mind the cream is the sea foam and the blues represent the ocean as it changes from light blue just behind the sea foam, to navy at the horizon.

So here are the photos of my Atlantica Waves ripple blanket, taken with the Atlantic Ocean in the background!

I think this ta-daaah post was worth the wait. Nevermind the wet, stringy hair and cold feet.

The nitty gritty of the Atlantic Waves ripple blanket:

Pattern: Atlantic Waves by Robyn Chacula
Yarn: Stylecraft Special DK in Midnight, Royal, Aster, Cloud Blue, Cream
Crochet hook: 5 mm
Border: No. 39 from Around The Corner Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman. It was the perfect border for this blanket – it even has a Treble, just like the ripple pattern!

The blanket is now safe and sound (and out of the rain) on my Dad’s bed. Just in time for the South African Winter.

Dear Husband and my Dad really like the blanket. John like it so much that he actually tried to get me to not give it to my Dad: “He doesn’t know he’s getting the blanket. It could just stay here with me.” He really enjoyed “test driving” the blanket again and again and again 😉 It’s obvious that John would like his own blanket….. bring on Autumn 2013 – I’ll be hooking my husband a blanket. I already have a pattern in mind. As you do.

Terrific Tuesday

03 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, My ramblings, Terrific Tuesdays

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

crochet, crochet blanket, ripple

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 and Pinterest likes every Tuesday and find us a pretty picture to add colour and joy to the day.

xxxxxx

I’m still busy with the ripple blanket in blue. I have about seven rows left to go, then I have to wash the blanket so that I can “open up” the ripples and stretch it a bit, weave in the ends and then do a border.

With each crashing wave and bubbling ripple of white foam, I’m getting closer to finishing my oceanic blanket.

Wishing you a terrific Tuesday!

Natasja

Crochet on TV (more Mad Men)

06 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by Natasja in As seen on TV, My ramblings, Other people's crochet

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

crochet blanket, Mad Men

Shortly before Christmas I received an email from Charlotte asking me whether I know how to make the crochet blanket that is draped over the couch of the Draper’s living room in Mad Men. (Did you see what I did there…? Draped over the Draper’s couch. Genius.)

Charlotte said she has spotted this crochet blanket in scenes from Mad Men Season 1 through to 3. How did I miss that?! Oh yes, I know. Mr. Draper himself was usually in the scene with the crochet blanket so my attentions were a tad diverted….

Mad Men blanket

Focus on the blanket ladies. Eyes to the right.

Upon closer inspection of this scene from Season 3, Episode 1 above I can safely say that the crochet blanket in Mad Men is a classic Catherine Wheel design in black, red, lemon yellow, mint green, white and beige with a deep red / maroon edge.

It looks like the blanket in Mad Men is the same as the one in another TV series, Breaking Bad. Sarah London explains in this blogpost exactly how to recreate the Breaking Bad blanket by using the Catherine Wheel crochet stitch, in other words, also how to create the Mad Men blanket seeing as it’s the same pattern!

The only slight difference I see is that in the Mad Men blanket, they sometimes have two rows in the same colour (like the lemon yellow in the photo at the top of this post), but apart from that, it’s very similar.

If you make a Catherine Wheel crochet blanket in black, red, lemon yellow, mint green, white and beige you will basically have recreated the blanket from two TV shows: Mad Men and Breaking Bad give or take a few colours! Score!

If you need more help, I found a video by the Crochet Geek on youtube that shows you exactely how to make a Catherine Wheel, also known as the Harlequin stitch.

On the Berocco website you can find a free pdf pattern for a Catherine Wheel blanket. They call it “Greenway” and it’s really pretty.

If we drape a Catherine Wheel crochet blanket over our couch, do you think Mr. Draper will drape himself over same couch? One can only hope…. and hook.

Terrific Tuesday

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Terrific Tuesdays

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

crochet blanket, ripple

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

xxxxxx

I think I have a thing for stripes….

The ripple blanket in shades of blue is coming along swimmingly. The name of the pattern is Atlantic Waves and that’s exactly what I’m going for here: an ocean themed blanket depicting blue waves and white sea foam. I know the carpet and socks might be a tad distracting, so I won’t blame you if you don’t get a calming ocean wave vibe.

I hope the first Tuesday of 2013 has been a terrific one!

Natasja

Terrific Tuesday

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Terrific Tuesdays

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

crochet blanket, ripple

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

xxxxxx

I finished the Mainly Grey Sweater on Sunday (a Ta-daaaah post will follow soon) and immediately started with this: a ripple blanket in shades of blue.

blue ripple wave crochet blanket

I hope your day hasn’t been blue and that your Christmas preparations are coming along nicely. Isn’t it strange to think that a week from today it’s Christmas Day? How time flies!

Wishing you all a Terrific Tuesday.

Natasja