Tag Archives: yarn

A Mastercard Morning

09 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern

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My Mastercard and I have been doing our bit for the British economy, keeping Royal Mail in business and contributing (quite substantially) to my yarn stash. The purchases haven’t been willy-nilly, random “ooh that’s pretty!” (although they are) purchases though. I have a plan. You see, Garnstudio has a Supersale on until the end of May, so I’m taking advantage of that. I also know exactly what I want to use the yarn for, so I know how much to buy and I know the yarn I choose will work for the pattern. Purposefully expanding my stash. See. A plan. Do you want to see what I bought and what I’ll be using it for? Of course you do!

First up is Doris Chan’s Tall Latte v-neck sweater from her book Everyday Crochet (there’s a link to it on the right of the page).

 
 
I’m not going to make the ribbing-like neck and sleeve edging – I have a better plan which I will tell you about once I start working on Tall Latte. I’m going to use Drops Merino Extra Fine in shade 04 – a medium grey. Yes I know grey is, well, grey, but I have three patterned Boden skirts that will look excellent with a grey top, so the whole outfit won’t be drab & dreary and I’ll get a lot of use out of the grey top.  Merino Extra Fine is one of the Super Sale yarns. In stead of paying £3.10 per ball, I paid £2.75 at The Crochet Chain.
 
Next up is a Garnstudio top called Country Dream. Sooo pretty!
 
 
The suggested yarn is Drops Safran. After the success of Whispers, I’m quite keen to stick to the suggested yarns for Garnstudio patterns, but Drops Safran isn’t on the Garnstudio Supersale list of marked down yarns. Luckily Scandinavian Knitting Design shop is offering it on sale! I bought shade 51 (Petrol) for £1.87 in stead of the usual £2.49! I’m going to modify the top so that it doesn’t hang over my hips, which means I could buy one less ball than suggested by the pattern. Another saving right there!
 
Last, but not least is a Vintage tank top. I bought the vintage Sirdar pattern from PastPerfect patterns this morning (and got the pdf within two hours!)
 
 
I’ll be making the one on the right with the flowery neckline. Isn’t it pretty?! I love the idea that I’m going to make something that’s proper vintage. Not a modern pattern reworked to look vintage, or vintage inspired, this baby is really truly from a vintage pattern.
 
All the Sirdar yarn they suggest, have been discontinued by now, so I had to find a substitute. Luckily I only need a very small amount of yarn as it’s a sleeveless pattern so I splurged and bought three balls of Rowan Sienna for £4.75 each. It’s not on sale, but at £4.75 a ball I know I’ll never crochet a whole sweater in this yarn, so as I only need three balls I thought what the heck. I bought a lovely green called Grasshopper from MCA Direct.
 
 
As soon as I’ve finished Belle I’ll start with the vintage tank top. I plan on taking it with me on holiday to Corfu at the end of this month. We’ll be there for a week. I can’t think of anything nicer than enjoying the sunshine in a foreign land, crochet hook and Rowan yarn in hand. I may even be able to finish the tank top whilst I’m there! Nevermind blocking, if I manage to finish it in Corfu, I’ll be wearing it in Corfu!
 
Drops Merino Extra Fine: £3.10 £2.75
Drops Safran: £2.49 £1.87
Rowan Sienna: £4.75

Three new crochet projects to get my hook into: Priceless

My crochet hero

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

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My crochet hero isn’t a single person. In fact it’s not a person at all. I’ts the yarn company Garnstudio, DROPS Design.

They’re my hero for having 529 crochet patterns on their website. For free. That’s just amazing! Okay, I know it’s in their interest to supply patterns to use with their yarn, but still. It’s free! They also don’t have any guarantee that everyone that downloads a pattern, will use Garnstudio yarn, so I think they’re super nice.

When you visit their website you can search for a pattern using this link. Just choose “crochet” as your pattern type. You can of course narrow down the search further if you’re looking for something specific.

As for their yarn: I’m a huge fan. They have an excellent range of yarns and each brand of yarn has a huge, oh so lovely, colour range to choose from.

I’ve used Drops Delight, Drops Paris, Drops BabyAlpaca Silk and Drops Cotton Viscose and I love them all.

I think my favourite has to be the BabyAlpaca Silk that I used for the Whispers Cardigan. The cardigan is a Garnstudio pattern, so it was a very good match and I think it’s part of the reason why my cardigan came out so lovely. The pattern and the yarn were definitely made for each other.

Drops yarn is also extremely affordable which is definitely heroic.

The DROPS Price policy is to always be 20-30 % below the general market price level. To make sure our customers benefit from this, the DROPS yarn is always marketed with a price guarantee, we call the max price. Max price is a guarantee from our retailers to our customers that the DROPS products are sold at these prices, or less.

Not only do the Garnstudio website have all the lovely patterns, they have crochet tutorial videos. The videos are without commentary so anyone, no matter what language, can follow the videos and learn something new.  There are five pages of videos! I especially like this technique of joining granny squares with a zig zag pattern.

What more do you want? Lots of beautiful crochet patterns, videos to refer to when you get stuck and an amazing selection of yarn at a very reasonable price.

Garnstudio DROPS Design = my hero.

P.S. From 1 – 30 May, 24 of the Garnstudio Drops yarns are on sale at 30% discount (see the list of yarn and discounted prices here) and until 30 April Drops Cotton Light is 25% off. What did I say about affordable yarn?!

Go forth and purchase ye Hookers.

Alta’s infinity scarf

27 Monday Feb 2012

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

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Do you remember the Infinity Scarf I made for my friend Helmien? I blogged about it here.

Well, Sunday evening I finished the third infinity scarf. This one is for Helmien’s friend, Alta. I’ve met Alta twice and she’s just a lovely as Helmien. Obviously with the same good taste 😉

Helmien tells me that she and Alta went to a coffee shop the day after I gave Helmien her scarf. When Helmien got up to go to the ladies, a woman followed her to the ladies to ask her where she got her scarf because she wants one too! Lovely Helmien told her about my Etsy shop and told the woman (who is a South African, visiting her daughter here in England) to Google “crocheTime” if she wants to contact me. I haven’t heard from the lady (yet), but it’s still an amazing story don’t you think?!

Anyway, back to this scarf. Alta wanted a scarf purely in Drops Delight shade no. 15 because she loves red. I think the red really pops in this yarn. It doesn’t matter if you wear this scarf with a red or blue coat, your eye will always be drawn to the red – ideal for a red-lover like Alta.

As with my and Helmien’s scarfs I also used a My Picot pattern. This one is pattern no. 2005. It’s the most intricate of the three I’ve used so far – not the type of pattern you can mindlessly hook whilst watching Desperate Housewives! I tried. I had to undo a couple of rows.

I used a total of five balls of yarn and a 3.5mm hook. Next time I think I will make the scarf a bit wider with this pattern, as it’s a very open and lacey which means it needs to be quite wide so that it will scrunch up better around your neck.

Don’t you just loooove this yarn? Even the most boring crochet pattern (which My Picot no. 2005 certainly wasn’t) will be a pleasure to hook because the numerous colour changes keep things interesting.

For now (i.e. until next Winter) I’m finished with infinity scarfs in Drops Delight. The next project awaits: a special order round cushion for my biggest supporter.

Helmien’s infinity scarf

11 Saturday Feb 2012

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

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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!

Terrific Tuesday

27 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Terrific Tuesdays

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

xxxxxx

My stash of cotton yarn (mostly Rowan Handknit Cotton and Drops Paris) on my wonderfully stripey colourful Ikea rug:

Yarn

Did it work? Do you feel inspired to take on Tuesday? I hope so!

Have a terrific Tuesday friends!

Natasja

If yarn were meth

21 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in My ramblings

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My friend Cornel of Craftshare recently posted a picture of a “Keep Calm and Carry Yarn” tote bag on her Facebook page.

 

It reminded me of my own “It takes balls to crochet” tote bag that I bought on Cafepress a year ago. Cafepress don’t sell my tote bag anymore but they do sell these….

I can relate to this:

 

…and to this. I’m forever looking for lost crochet hooks between couch cushions.

Off you go to Cafepress, I know you want to 🙂