The Rising Sun - Ripple Blanket

The Rising Sun is the thrird blanket destined for my Madder Triangles book
I thought you might like to see my progress.

The blanket is named after The Rising Sun pub  (my "local"), at the bottom of the hill were I live.
Incidently its also a very good hotel and does amazing seafood - well worth a visit, especially if you want to watch the locals being idiots on a Friday night.

The pub faces east over the harbour wall in Lynmouth. If you get up early enough you can see the sun rising over Countisbury Hill.
The photo below was taken in the evening, but you will get the idea.

My blanket has waves of green and blue nestled in the bright pink and orange sun rise.
I've wanted to make a ripple blanket for ages, but struggle with crocheting straight rows, they involve counting stitches, which I never get right however hard I try, so I needed to make a ripple with motifs.

I've been crocheting for a couple of weeks.
You will have to excuse the photo's - they are taken with my iPhone.

This is what it look like before the Woolfest.

This is what it looked like after the Woolfest

And this is what it looked like yesterday morning.

I can't wait to finish the central panel so I can start the border, I think it will transform the whole blanket.
I am finding having to crochet 24 identical triangles (one row) really boring, but thats because I have a very low boredom thresehold.
I want to see something new happening with the colours every few motif's, so the Rising Sun is testing my patience.
Its almost there and every new row makes the anticipation more exciting.

After the Woolfest

Life has almost returned to its normal chaotic state, rather than warp speed chaos which is what we were going through this time last week.

We had an amazing Woolfest, our best ever, which is fantastic.
NDS has 2 homes, 1 business premises, 3 human mouths and 3 animal mouths to support and  feed, life isn't always easy so having such a brilliant show really helps.
In fact its helped so much we are thinking about having a few days off at the end of the month, so we can eat ice cream and be tourists in our own home.

And the Woolfest liked us as much as we liked it, we won first prize for the best double stand :-)

We were so busy that I didn't have time to take many photo's, but I did take these early Saturday morning before the lovely customers were allowed in.

The lovely Emily from John Arbon Textiles, buying back the wool she spun for us a few months ago.
Hopefully Phil gave her a big discount as she is almost family, she's Daisy's house mate and a lovely lovely person.
You might know her from her previous life, she was the dyer behind Viola Yarns

Daisy has written a much better blog post than me, but then she is a writer, so its to be expected.
She has far more photo's as she was allowed to sneak off and take them at the end of Saturday before breakdown.
She's also written about "Team NDS" and its journey to get where it is today.
Its well worth a read.
You can find her blog HERE

Backbone of a book (Waiting for the Woolfest)

We're off to the Woolfest tomorrow.
We've spent the last week dyeing Woolfest wool and now Phil is winding like mad trying to get it all ready in time.
Dais and I are labeling and wandering around trying to work out what we need.
The last few weeks have been very busy and chaotic.
I keep thinking that once we have finished dyeing for the show and wholesale and clubs things will get back to normal, but I'm beginning to realise that chaos is normal.
So having a few hours to dither is a luxury.

 While I've been dithering I've been photographing wips for the new book, I've been posting them on twitter and facebook.
And so thought I would do a blog post about the book and project wips.

The book will have 5 design sections with 2 projects in each section.
So here is the backbone of "Madder Triangles"

Semi Random - needs new name

Lecchi Blanket - Finished

Plankton Scarf  - WIP

Ripple 

Un-named blanket - WIP

Isabella Scarf - Finished

Star

Florence Blanket - Finished and given to baby Florence

Myrtle Blanket  - WIP which I am making as a Florence variation to exhibit on the stand at show's.

Star Scarf - not designed yet.

Spiral

Spyro Blanket - Finished

Spiral shawl - not designed yet

Wings

Icarus Shawl - Finished 

 Designed for my project club, the members haven't recieved the last pattern installment yet, so you only get a very tiny peak.

Serefina Shawl - Finished

 It's a lace variation of the first one and has lots more colours, as its very similar to the club shawl you can only see a tiny bit of this one too.

I can already feel the RSI creeping in....sigh.......

Crochet design

One of the ladies in my Ravelry group has been asking about crochet design classes.
I've told her I don't think there are any, as I've never heard of any, but I could be wrong.
Its got me thinking about crochet design in general.
.
I spend a lot of time on Ravelry looking at projects and patterns and have come to the conclusion that crochet design is about 10 years behind knitting design.
About 80% of crochet projects are made with cheap acrylic and feature the long time favourite granny square.
Please don't think I am anti granny squares as all crocheters and designers need to start somewhere and its a very simple motif, easy to make and perfect for beginners.
I'm not even anti acrylic even though I hate it and wouldn't use it myself, I understand that a lot of people can't afford more expensive yarn, especially if its for a blanket.
Plus a lot of beginners don't want to invest in expensive yarn only to find out they don't like crochet or find they can't do it.

My first blanket design was Bessies Blanket and was made with granny squares.
Bessie was a huge success, mainly because of the way the colours worked together. the success lead me to experiment and I haven't stopped experimenting since.

As I began to understand how crochet motifs worked my designs became more complicated and I decided it was my mission to change the way crocheters thought, gently persuade them to move forward from the granny and try something more complex.
So I wrote this

"My personal crusade is to make crochet motif’s sexy & desirable.

They normally have a bad reputation, ever noticed the un-loved granny square blankets lurking in the depths of many charity shops? 

The motifs deserve a bit more respect and love, hence my crusade!"

In the last year or so I have realised that I am trying to swim against the tide and being arrogant to think I can change the crochet world.

A big perecntage of the crochet world is happy where it is and doesn't want to change and if it makes them happy I shouldn't presume that I know better.

I have stepped away from my crusade, gone back to using a very simple motif and decided to concentrate on colour instead. After all its the thing that inspires me the most, being a dyer means I can dye the colours I need. 

You might of noticed NDS's colour range is based around the rainbow, very selfishly I've created my own palette :-)

Anyway going back to crochet design.

The remaining 20% of crocheter's/designers are moving forwards and making more and exciting designs.

For example if you search Crochet Shawl in the Ravelry patterns you will find some absolutely beautiful designs.

There are some incredibly talented designers, have a look at their profiles most of them started off with something simple like scarves and have developed over time.

I'll leave the crusade to them as they are doing a lot better job than I was and carry on indulging myself.

So my advice to my dear Ravelry lady is to start off slowly, don't run before you can walk.

Experiment and take time to develop your own style.

And good luck, I look forward to watching your progress.