Next project on the go

Hooray, my lovely husband has finally managed to get home from London after being stuck there for a few days sur to the snow. But, today while I was feeling anxious about him making the journey I started a new crochet project.

I’m still not motivated to go back to spirits of life, but have started a second pattern for a top by lilla bjorn (who wrote the spirits of life CAL). Sitting here earlier I spotted 2 rainbow sprinkles caron cakes in my stash and immediately wanted to make a top for myself with them. Though I also have 2 cakes of blueberry kiwi and I can’t decide at the moment if I might use one of them for the back instead of the second cake of rainbow sprinkles. I’d love your thoughts on that, though i don’t have to make the decision until I find out if I can successfully crochet the front!

I’ve started on the front but was having trouble concentrating due to my anxiety, and I also had to frog several rounds twice when I realised I’d missed a stitch 🤔.

The caron cakes call for a 5mm hook, but the pattern uses a different yarn and a smaller hook. I started with a 4mm hook but felt the holes were too big, so dropped to 3.75mm. Now my octagon is going quite wrinkly. I don’t know if that is just how it would be… The pattern says the octagon will start going curly but that can be remedied with blocking… Or if its because I’m using the wrong size hook for the wool? What do you guys think? Does it matter? Will it sort itself out if I block it?

Anyway, here’s how far I’ve got… I’m about half a round off the orange colour change which I’m looking forward to!

Meanwhile, Emma bunny has found a home on one of my bookshelves… I think she might be working her way through the Arthur ransome books (swallows and amazons etc) while I’m asleep at night!

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Snow days rock!!

Oh how lovely it was to have a Friday morning where I didn’t set my alarm, woke up naturally at 8:15, fed the piggies and took my cereal and coffee back to bed with me, read from two different books and caught up with blogs, and finally got out of bed about 11.30! I can’t really say I got up, as I’m still in my pj’ s now, but at least I haven’t been back to bed since then!

Then this afternoon held an unexpected surprise. My friend Adelina also works in a school and lives across the park from us. She messaged just to say hi and when I found out she was thinking of going out for a little walk and then home to do some sewing or drawing I suggested she could come here and draw or sew while I crocheted. With Mark being stuck in London since Tuesday I was beginning to feel the lack of social company.

Adelina came over and we started talking crochet. She’s done some in the past and it’s trying to work out how to get back into it. We talked about granny squares and she fancied making a blanket from lots of small squares. So we got out my stash and she found colours she liked, and we started working together on a square from a book of different patterns that I hadn’t got round to using yet. It was so much fun to share my stash in this way.

I made the swatch alongside her, and had my usual trouble of working out what is the first stitch of the row. Does anyone have a good explanation for this, or does it depend on the pattern which stitch they refer to as the first one?

Adelina wasn’t worried though as she was using this first attempt to get the feel of things. I’d suggested not making the chain too tight but then she felt she was crocheting more loosely than she’d like so she deliberately made it tighter about half way up.

It was so exciting and satisfying to help someone to explore crochet. I’ve helped her to learn double crochet, and treble crochet, as well as how to crochet into the chain, and how to count stitches. I’m really pleased with how her swatch has turned out.

Here’s mine too.

We’ll hopefully see each other on Thursday evening for a crochet session at my neighbour’s house, so we’re going to work on a traditional granny square together then.

In between rows, this morning and after Adelina left I’ve managed to finish off Emma bunny. Here she is exploring the piggies’ cage.

She’s decided she’d rather stay out here with me as I’m more friendly than the piggies, even if I do take cheeky photos of her bottom (I looked on line to try to find out what her tail is supposed to look like but couldn’t find any photos or instructions, so thought I’d show you how I did it!).

I’m really pleased with her and love how her ears flop.

That’s all my crochet sanctuary projects finished off. I might have to go back to spirits of life and see if I can get a bit more of that done, and I’ll keep the seaside stash buster blanket rows as a reward for later in the week.