Crochet Along With Me

Seven Colour Saturday!

No, I don’t think this will become a regular feature but it seems a good title for today’s post! I don’t think I’ve miscounted, but we’ll see.

I am really enjoying the temperature projects for February. The colours are stimulating despite the chill in the air.

You may remember that as well as making a temperature blanket showing morning and later temperatures, I am also comparing this year and last year in a Spirit of February blanket

Above I’ve shown yesterday’s squares from both, but as I was joining each I put them next to each other by chance.

Below are the four squares. Some of the colours are the same, but together they are inspiring me to make another blanket at some time. The colours are Stylecraft Special DK:

Sherbet
Storm blue
Violet
Bluebell
Wisteria
Parma Violet and
Parchment

And yes! That’s seven!!

Five Colour Friday

There was such a good response to last week’s Five Colour Friday that I’ve decided to give you another! 😉

I have to admit that I have only recently discovered that I like working with Blues! It was a colour I avoided for a number of years, partly, in retrospect, due to the awful blue that we were forced to wear as our school uniform.

That blue was nothing like the ones included here!

Stylecraft Special DK is once again the order of the day and the colours are:

Clematis
Duck Egg
Storm Blue
Lobelia
Parchment – for the linking colour too. Such a useful colour.

This blanket took one ball of the first four colours and 3 of parchment. As usual they were purchased from Deramores.

This collection is related to the Spirit of January Blanket that is currently under construction. Last year I found that these ‘Spirit’ blankets were inspiration for far more than I expected. I’m sure you will see more collections that are similarly inspired.

Find all Five Colour Friday posts via this link.

This was the moment…

…

Working by lamplight isn’t easy, especially if you are partly distracted by an interesting tv show. (Let’s face it, there aren’t many, so this was unusual!)

The cold light of day, however, revealed that I’d picked up Sage instead of Storm Blue! Fortunately it won’t matter, I can just reverse their placement, but this is a warning …

Always read the label!

More about this very soon.

Five Colour Friday

The first Five Colour Friday for 2018.

Pretty colours that I’ve enjoyed using.

The outer colour is Mocha, a medium shade of warm brown which is a very useful linking colour.

It’s been a while since I used this block and it was fun to return to it.

Once again the colours are Stylecraft Special DK which I purchased from Deramores. I have to admit that they have been waiting in my stash for a little while, I’m glad I decided to use them.

They go so well together I’ve decided to include them in another project so keep your eyes open on the blog – it may not be long before it makes an appearance.

Almost there …

My first blanket of the Stashbuster series is almost finished. I just have a little more tidying up to do and that will be that. I’m going to call it the Betsy Blanket because it reminds me of someone! Here are a few glimpses, but another post will come soon with further details.

I’m really pleased with it

Because it really is made entirely with stash
It hasn’t taken long
It’s caused the beginnings of another project!

There will be more details about the C2C in another post to come soon. In the meantime – it’s back to the Spirit of January and the temperature blanket!

Temperature update

January has been an interesting month. Unlike last year it has been particularly gloomy for several days. The few that have been sunlit have been such a blessing. Today was such a day, although this evening is wet. Nights have been very dark. The moon isn’t rising until the early hours (this morning it rose after I was up for the day) so the sky is hardly lit. This has not been good for either choosing colours, or for photographs! All crochet has been done during the hours of darkness, so I’ve been waiting to take pictures, and finally here are a few…

This year I’m making the temperature blanket in a slightly different way. Last year’s was made in monthly blocks – and these were joined into the seasons. I used 4 linking colours, but this year I’m only using one – and there will be no seasonal breaks. One long strip of granny blocks is a little boring, so instead, here is a block of nine days (a photo collage)

The colours are as cool as the weather and edged with Parchment. I think it goes very well with the blues and lilacs.

I’m using the same colour to edge the blocks for the Spirit of January. You may remember that I’m comparing the days of last year with those of this – so each square has 4 rounds of colour. Here is a photo collage of nine days.

You can see that so far last year was far more colourful than this year, and in the above no days were the same. However….

that changed at the weekend. You can see that the days were identical as far as temperature was concerned.

How is your blanket coming along? Are you making a Temperature Blanket? They are fun – and worth the long effort of making a square a day.

Corner turned

It’s always satisfying to turn the corner in a C2C! It signifies that the rows are getting shorter, and, all being well, it won’t be long before it’s all finished. A very satisfying stashbusting exercise.

I’ve started to put together some large thread collections of my hand dyed threads. They will be particularly useful if you are a member of a group with a Sales Table. They are useful for both embroidery and crochet, in fact I’m planning a project with some of them shortly. Click the picture below or follow this link if you are interested – there are a few collections, but this price will only be available for the month of January.