Tag Archives: draft stopper

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.

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.