Ready to crochet again

Posted on October 16, 2023 by The Little Room of Rachell

The weather has turned much, much cooler after we’ve had a mini heatwave…in October?! Last Sunday we walked in T-shirts and shorts, sat under an oak tree for shade and drank lots of water during our six mile walk along footpaths and bridle ways. Afterwards I laid on a sun lounger in the garden, eating birthday cake, sipping tea and loving the sun. Actually I remember now that I had to go in to get something to shade my face, it was so baking on the patio. I could feel my cheeks burning. Now, a week later, it’s much more typical for the autumn season and is at least ten degrees cooler. (Last night we had our first frost and so I went out and cut the best of the lettuces this morning, just in case they keel over later in the week.) Crochet is suddenly looking really appealing. With something warm and woolly on your lap to keep you cosy, why wouldn’t it? In the last week or so I found I kept stopping at woolly posts on Insta and thinking ‘That crochet lark looks like a good thing. I used to do a lot of that, didn’t I?!’ I always have a hiatus during the summer, because it’s just too warm for wool, especially as I always have hot hands, but it’s been even longer this year…

So, I’ve begun to join my squares to make up my coast blanket. Started in 2020 when we went away on holiday, finally, after months of Lockdown, it really began life as an unplanned project. “Argh! I’ve forgotten to bring anything to do on holiday!” I had to buy a hook and whatever yarn the small local yarn shop had in stock in a town in West Cornwall. I wasn’t sure if it was to be a cowl, scarf or what. I ended up crocheting a basic granny square and was so taken by the look of the colour changes that I made another and another and ….

Do you remember how during Lockdown the urge to be creative and keep busy with crafting took hold of a great many people? I suspect crochet and knitting alleviated anxiety for many as well. I know I found it soothing when I felt caged and lonely at home. Because of the huge demand it became really difficult to get hold of specific yarn. Also when you’re living on an island during a pandemic and post-Brexit, shipments were (are still) often stuck in Europe. I ended up having to chop and change Hayfield Spirit DK colour variations. I just had to hope they would all blend in the end. I do think they work together. Also, the joining colours of the greys and cream should bring together all the others. My original intention was to have a blues and greys colour theme, so that they would match a Dorma grey flower king-size duvet, it’s rather more mixed than that, but this reflects the fact that it came to be during a very topsy turvy time. (I’ve paused to lay and light the log burner. It’s really getting chilly now. Chicken & lentil soup for dinner should help too.)

I really love Hayfield Spirit, it is fine and lightweight for DK, but with even only 20% wool content it’s really warm.

I crocheted eight large granny squares, many done during the subsequent Lockdowns when long calls became a lifeline to friends and family. Then the rest slowly followed over the last few years, in between other makes (remember my bobble cowl obsession?) The squares are made up of 30 rounds, after each round I flipped the square over to avoid tilting. I’m doing a continuous JAYGO (join as you go) method. It’s lush! (I always think of Gavin & Stacy when I say that.) There’s something really satisfying about the way it comes together without fuss. Less breaking and joining of wool while connecting the pieces should make for a stronger blanket too. It’s been a while since I did this method, so I needed to find a diagram to use as a map. Heather of The Patchwork Heart blog has a great photo to use as a guide. (Here, if you think you will need it I suggest that you save a copy of that photo since I’m sorry to write that Heather is struggling with ill health and has stated on Instagram that she’s going to delete her blog and social media accounts. She hasn’t yet, but may do in the future.) I saved and edited it; flipping it to a mirror image. We lefties crochet in the opposite direction and 99.9% of instructions are naturally for the 95% of right handers.

The blanket will probably need to have a good sized border because I want it to be a fairly large size to cover the bed.

I sent this photo to a friend who had helped me decide on the squares layout: “All four top squares are joined!”

As soon as I’d sent it I realised…Uh oh! That the grey block is the wrong side up. I want all the right side foundation rounds to be the right side up, and the yarn tail is on top. How can I have missed that?! Ridiculous as I definitely very carefully checked.

“Here we are! NOW they’re joined.”

Luckily I had the dulcet tones of Miriam Margoyles reading her new book Oh Miriam! To ease the pain of going around again. If you’re a Premium subscriber Spotify now includes 15 hours a month of audiobooks. (In the UK at least.) I’m so pleased! I’ve already listened to all of And Away by Bob Mortimer and a bit of something else, so I won’t be able to listen to much more of Miriam’s until the beginning of my new membership month, unless I can access to a copy on the library apps Libby or BorrowBox. But it doesn’t seem to be available on those yet. We went to see Miriam recently on her theatre tour. She’s absolutely fab, so quick and funny. But I’m warning you; the woman and the book won’t be for the faint-hearted. The faint-hearted will be missing out.

I’m deliberating whether to leave you with a photo of my Romaine lettuce pickings from this morning. It’s the first time I’ve grown them and I am VERY pleased with their crunch and flavour, but I think I should keep this a woolly post and you can see them later. Sorry to disappoint the lettuce fans!

How are you? What have you been making? Are you listening to any audiobooks at the moment?

CROCHET

Posted on October 8, 2014 by The Little Room of Rachell

Lately I’ve been whipping up dishcloths. I’ve tried a few different, slightly fancier, versions in the past but apparently the plain and simple trebles give good scrub-ability! I’ve been knitting or crocheting dishcloths for several years now as they’re very popular with a few relatives. One boils hers every week and so it’s been a stringent test of my darning! (Passed. Gold star.)

I’m trying to get on with the motif blanket now. I’ve crocheted one motif in about four weeks so have to really get cracking ….tra la la la la, la la la la and all that….

I’ve darned as I’ve gone lately, but as you see some of the motifs I began with are not yet; so the middles are a bit pulled out, they’ll be nice and tightly uniform at the end.

Are you crocheting at the mo?

Sometimes there is no right way

Posted on June 5, 2014 by The Little Room of Rachell

Playing with joining as you go the other evening I took this photo as a reminder; because I didn’t feel too confident that it was right, and thought they’d probably soon be un-joined!

After Carina commented on my last post, reminding me that she’s crocheted some of the motifs from Edie Eckman’s fabulous Beyond the Square book, I emailed her the photo above and asked how she would have joined them. It’s the first time I’ve used the join-as-you-go technique with anything apart from granny squares. I was really dithering and feeling unconfident. When I start saying, or thinking, ‘Well, I’ve only been crocheting a few years’ I know I’m struggling with something. It’s not the end of the world, but is an irritating feeling.

Carina is one of those bloggers that you just know will answer a query and try their best to help. I rushed to work yesterday having fired off a HELP ME! email, and in the evening found not one, but two replies from her. The first saying she’d had a busy day but would get back to me shortly. The second, sent less than an hour later, had detailed ‘This is how I would do it’ instructions and an attached photo. She’d obviously pulled out her BtS book and had a go at joining two motifs. How kind!

I do prefer Carina’s joining method which replaces the 3 corner chains with 1 ch, 1 jss (joining slip stitch) 1 ch. This was the part I wasn’t sure about. Do you replace all the ch with one jss, or only one? How many jss would you need overall? What about the 5 ch in the middle? Carina had also joined this motif in four places, rather than three.

If the motifs were making up a blanket it would probably be more…I’m struggling for the word….connected? Strong? Less gapy? I just checked the spelling of gapy, so I didn’t type gappy by mistake instead, and asked ‘Is it gay-ai-pee-why?’ I’m tired!’ Taking non-drowsy cough med is so stupid right before bed. Consequently I was wide awake and reading my Kindle after midnight last night. (The book was Necessary Lies, if like me you like to know these details. It was a 99p Kindle deal I bought weeks ago. Diane Chamberlain a new-to-me author but the blurb interested and readers’ reviews and stars were impressive on Amazon. The first two chapters have me completely intrigued already.)

The point which I’ll try quickly to come to now, I always waffle far more when tired, is that when I popped into the library today I swerved to the fab craft section and ended up having a quick flick through a Crochet Guide by Jane Crowfoot. She writes that joining motifs is similar to free-form crochet; no two people will join them in the same way. I’m really grateful to Carina for her help, will be joining the motif using her suggestion, but also have learnt a good lesson and a bit of a confidence booster on the way. Sometimes there isn’t always a right way or a wrong way. There’s your way and there’s my way.