Super Stripy Snood ta-daah

28 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by Natasja in Knitting, My knitting, Ta-daah!

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Well what have we here? A ta-daah post for a completed yarny item? Yes indeed! I knitted a Super Stripy Snood to match my grey winter coat, and I love it!

It all began on the 9th of August when John and I took iVan (which is for sale by the way in case you are interested in purchasing a super awesome campervan) to Brighton for the day. Before we left the house, I Googled “yarn shops in Brighton” (as you do) and came across Yak a lovely little yarn shop in Gloucestershire road. We wore our flip-flops thin to find Yak so when we got there John was adamant I should at least buy something to make it worth the effort. And yes, I did make a mental note of husband’s fortuitous statement and will in future always select the yarn shop furthest from where we parked the car.

Seeing as I was now forced to buy something at this great little shop – joy oh joy – I went for 8 balls of MillaMia Naturally Soft Merino in shades to match my grey coat – blues and soft greyish shades. They are:

Shade 121 – Putty

Shade 102 – Storm

Shade 120 – Forget me not

Shade 161 – Seaside (I mean really. How perfect?)

I don’t usually go for these muted tones but that’s what was needed to match my grey coat. Yak had many other gorgeous bright shades of MillaMia which were so tempting, but I had to stick to my plan of finding something to match the coat. Of course blue matches grey and it would remind me of our day in Brighton so adding the Seaside shade was a no-brainer.

I didn’t start knitting until October, but when I did boy it was gooood! I chose the very simple and soothing knit stitch for 90% of the snood. The other 10% was stockinette stitch for when I was using Adriafil Knitcol shade 55. Like I said, I don’t usually go for muted shades and felt the need for something in a darker blue to break up all the muted-ness. I had long ago fallen in love with the crazy beautiful things people were knitting with Knitcol so here was my chance – their “Renoir” shade matched my MillaMia shades perfectly!

Throughout October and November I knitted and knitted. The sweet receptiveness of knit stitch, mindlessly changing colour whenever I felt like it, mixing solid bands of colours, 2-colour stripe combinations and sections of the self striping Knitcol to make a super stripy snood.

I finished the snood just in time for the cold English Winter and wore it for the first time last Monday.

You probably want to see more of the stripes of this Super Striped Snood. Here it is. (John took the photos on our way to work. Can you spot the heron in the background?)

First Half

I repeated three of the sections of colour twice, but apart from those repeating bands there isn’t really a pattern. It’s just randomly knitting stripes.

Second Half

With so many stripes and different colour combinations the snood can look different every time I twist it around my neck. I love it!

I can highly recommend knitting a Super Striped Snood or Scarf. It’s the ultimate easy project for playing with colour and it looks great! It’s also a great stash busting project. Or you can do what I did and go on day trip and park the car as far as possible from the best yarn shop in town.

Granny squares and alpacas

06 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, My ramblings

≈ 12 Comments

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crochet, granny square, scarf

The day of my granny square workshop at Toft Alpaca farm finally arrived on Saturday. I have been looking forward to this since reading about Toft Alpaca Farm in Simply Crochet magazine way back in the Summer.

I had to drive two hours to get to the farm, but it was so worth it. Hubby asked, and you are probably wondering as well, why would I want to attend a workshop, two hours away, on making granny squares, when I already can make granny squares (and much more)? Well, you see, I taught myself to crochet so I’ve always wondered whether I could (should?) be doing things differently. I think I wanted reassurance that what I’ve been doing is right, but at the same time I’m open to new techniques and different takes on the same thing. Seeing as I’ve never attended a crochet class of any kind I felt I’ve missed out on that aspect as well: the group of women sitting together, following the instructions of our teach and making something together.

I’m so glad I decided to go because the workshop, in fact the whole day, was everything I hoped it would be.

The day started at 10 am with coffee, having a nose around the beautiful shop and “where did you travel from?”, “have you crocheted before?” chat amongst the nine ladies and one gentleman. Everyone seemed really nice and we were a good mix of ages which made for interesting conversation.

We found our seats at the huge table in the beautiful workshop of the Toft Alpaca Shop and then Carrie started the lesson. We started with instructions on how to hold the crochet hook, how to wind your working yarn so that the tension is consistent and then the hooking began.

By 11 am everyone had made two rounds of the granny so we took a break to walk around the farm.

Wellies on, and off we went. It was great seeing the alpacas out there in the field, knowing that by the end of the day I would have made granny squares from their fleece.

So cute!

My absolute favourite animal is a giraffe. I’ve never seen one in real life, but I’d like to think I spent a morning with their smaller wooly cousins. Those long necks are so wrong, they’re right. Right?

Carrie provided a wealth of information and interesting facts about alpacas and the farm. She told us things such as; alpaca’s will obey straight lines, that they have excellent peripheral vision, baby alpaca are called cria, they making a humming sound when content and will spit if they feel threatened. There are officially 22 shades of alpaca fleece but early British importers were told to import white alpacas as the yarn can be dyed different shades. Luckily Toft don’t dye or bleach their wool. Why would anyone want to dye alpaca wool if you have 22 natural shades?

When we got back from our walk it was time for lunch, coffee and cake and more crocheting. Just heavenly.

I opted to make the granny square scarf which means I had to buy an extra “goody bag” of chunky alpaca wool on top of the pack already included in my £60 workshop fee.

I’m so glad I decided to make the huge granny square scarf. I love it! It’s incredibely warm and snuggly.

I made my scarf with 8 squares of 4 round granny squares and finished it on Sunday evening. Chunky yarn + 12 mm hook = super fast finished project!!!

What I found the most interesting (apart from all the alpaca facts) about the workshop was how quickly people can pick up crocheting. I sat between two knitters who had never crocheted, but by the end of the day, one had completed a granny square in chunky alpaca, and Sue was making Russian Square wrist warmers in DK. In one morning Sue had progressed from learning to crochet by making granny squares, to actually reading a pattern for Russian Squares! She emailed me on Monday to say that they crochet bug had bitten her big time and she loves crochet now just as much as knitting! Nevermind wrist warmers, she’s going to make a blanket! How great is that?!

It was probably inevitable that a day on an Alpaca farm, learning to crochet granny squares with a group of other students in a beautiful setting with amazing natural fibres, can make anyone addicted to crochet. Then again, if you’re following this blog and have read this far, you already know how addictive crochet can be and you don’t need a furry miniature giraffe to inspire you (but it helps).

P.S. The next crochet workshop at Toft is an Amigurimi workshop on Saturday 16 February. If you can, go!

A Manly Scarf

28 Friday Sep 2012

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

≈ 11 Comments

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scarf

Check out my Dad modelling a crocheted scarf!

Doesn’t he look like Sean Connery?

The scarf is a Christmas present for one of Hubby’s friends. I started work on it on 20 August and finished it while Dad was visiting me. I just had to rope in Dad to play model – that beard and suntanned skin is perfect for a winter accessory photo shoot.

Check out the “I’m staring into the Great Wide Yonder” pose:

And “I have to wear my sunglasses against the glare of the snow”:

~~Dad~~ The model requested a mug so that he could “make the blog people think it’s very cold. Brrrrr.” No really, he said Brrrr out loud. Method modelling obviously works for him.

If I can drag you away from David Gandy-30-years-from-now, I’ll tell you about the scarf.

I was inspired by Jan Eaton’s chocolate box block from her 200 Crochet Blocks book . I used chocolate box for my livingroom couch cushions and they look really great. To my great surprise I turn the cushions so that chocolate box is at the front, more than the Roses & Daisies. Who would have thunk?

This scarf is basically just a row version of the chocolate box square. I thought I was very clever turning a square into a row. Little did I know that the stitch is an existing crochet stitch called Brick Stitch. I found this out when I bought Robyn Chachula’s Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia. Right there on page 15 is my Manly Scarf sans the Sean Connery lookalike! So much for originality. On the other hand, I was quite pleased to see that my handwritten filofax pattern looks almost identical to Robyn’s diagram for the stitch. Brownie point for me.

The nitty gritty of the scarf:

Pattern: Brick stitch as per my pattern below. For more accurate instructions than my handwritten scribble, see Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia. (On Amazon you can “Look inside” the book and if you log into Amazon you’ll be able to see the full written and diagram instruction for this pattern.) The @ on the edges of my pattern tells me where I should put the stitch markers to indicate the top of the 3 chain turning chain. I know it seems a bit over the top, but whenever I’m doing anything with straight lines I rely heavily on my stitch markers to keep track of the top of my turning chains.

Hook: 4.5 mm. I know the photo above says 4mm, but once I started working on the scarf I felt that a 4.5 mm was better.

Yarn: I used seven colours varying from 100% acrylic, to an acrylic & wool mix, to 100% wool. They were:

Charcoal: Stylecraft Life DK

Claret: Stylecraft Special DK

Gray: Stylecraft Special DK

Black: Stylecraft Life DK

Turquoise: Schoppel-Wolle Admiral 6-fach left over from the Childhood Memories shawl

Silver: Stylecraft Special DK

Mocha: Stylecraft Special DK, left over from the Identity Crisis blanket

The tassels I made using my Finishing Techniques for Crochet book, but you can also get the instructions here. It’s extremely easy to do. Promise. Whenever the tassel is attached to a DC row, I used three strands, and for a SC row, I used two strands.

That’s it. One manly scarf as modelled by Dad.

Thanks for making the scarf look so great Dad, and for being such a great (role)model. ♥

Japanese scarf Ta-daah!

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by Natasja in My crochet, Ta-daah!

≈ 20 Comments

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crochet, Japanese crochet, scarf

Raise your chopsticks crocheters, my first crochet item from a Japanese pattern is done!

I know it’s only a scarf and that once you get the motif under the belt, it’s just a case of repeating it a hundred times – literally, so it’s probably not the fanciest, most intricate piece of Japanese crochet, but still. I’m proud of it and I think my friend will like it too.

I’ve shown you the halfway mark and some sneak peak photos but this photo really shows off the intricate lacyness to its best (hanging from a hanger, hooked onto the Ikea floor lamp. As you do.)

Doesn’t the scarf look great with the coat (hanging from the neighbour’s fence. As you do.)?

I just love a scarf that can throw shadows on your coat! To get the scarf this open and fine, you absolutely have to, have to, have to block your work. Have a look at my halfway mark blogpost and you’ll see how the scarf looked before blocking. For this scarf, blocking isn’t optional, it’s essential.

The magic of this scarf and yarn combo is that eventhough it’s super light, open and lacy it’s still nice and warm as a scarf should be. And there’s so much going on! Every motif is different.

I think the variegated yarn really works extremely well with this scarf. The scarf in the book was done in navy and it looks great, but I think variegated yarn looks better. On the other hand, it might be that I’m just biased seeing as I really can’t imagine enjoying crocheting 100 navy motifs, but 100 uniquely different motifs, that I could do.

The nitty gritty of the Japanese scarf:

Pattern: Pattern no. 17 from Ondori Motif Crochet – Japanese cloth, sold as an e-book on Etsy.
Yarn: 4-ply variegated sock yarn by Garnstudio, called Fabel in shade 911p
Hook: 4 mm
Modifications made: The pattern calls for 6 rows of 20 motifs each, but I only did 5 rows.

I hope I’ve inspired you to also try your hook at Japanese patterns. It really isn’t that difficult. Honestly. If I can do it, anyone can! (If you need a couple of pointers, I give links to helpful websites towards the end of this blogpost.)

Konichi wa hookers!

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