Colour theory and excuses

Last week I did a little bit of moaning about the fact I can't share what I'm crocheting at the moment.
I have 3 secret projects on the go at the moment.

The first and biggest project is my book, I have finally started writing patterns and realised I have a mountain of work to do.
Luckily the blankets are under control, I've finished 7 blankets and am well over half way through number 8, numbers 9 and 10 are in the design stage.
Number 9 is going to be relatively simple, but I'm planning a mega complex explosion of colour for number 10 :-)
The second project is the Zodiac which is really 2 in 1 as I'm having to sew in Phil's ends and construct the knitted blanket as well as the crochet one.
I think we are up to September, I'd like to get it finished ASAP, but I need to be realistic and do all the other things I need to do too.
And the last project is something I am working on for Love Crochet, hopefully all will be revealed in the very near future.

All these projects mean that I don't really have much to say or share with you, I've been very quiet on Instagram and my other social networking sites.
Yesterday I decided I needed to do something positive about it rather than moaning that I was too busy.

So here is yesterday's work.
It is the beginnings of a colour wheel/rainbow tutorial.
I made my own life incredibly difficult when I closed NDS, all my designs are made out of NDS yarns and so I need to recommend replacements to you so you can make my designs.
I didn't realise how difficult finding yarns to recommend would be, firstly I need to find natural yarns that I enjoy using and then I need to choose the yarns that have the biggest colour ranges in them..sigh..
DK isn't too difficult as there are lots of DK yarns I like, but 4 ply is proving a bit of a nightmare.

So to make it as easy as possible for you I decided I needed to do some swatches to explain what I'm trying to say.

 

I started off with 2 big piles of yarn, because stupidly I thought I could do all the colour wheel swatches for both in a day!

The 2 yarns are my NDS colours, which are my default colours and the other yarn is Drops Alpaca

        

After I had crocheted a couple of base circles I realised I didn't have time to do both yarns, so the Drops Alpaca got put back in the basket for another day.

My plan was to do 3 wheels for each yarn, one for the primary colours, one for the secondary colours and one whole wheel.

I started with the whole wheel (primary, secondary and tertiary colours)  as it was easier to work backwards.

The base colour is silver, as I don't really like white, its far too easy to get dirty.

I try not to wear white as it seems to instantly attract food, whether I've eaten or not.

Anyway this is the whole NDS colour wheel, these are most of the colours I use for all my designs.

There are a few other colours, but if you collect these you should be able to make most of my blankets easily.

 I photographed the wheel on a white background as in theory this would give the truest colours, however I also photographed it on the natural wooden background of my coffee table because I like the way the colours look against the wood.

Neither of the above photo's look completely right, so I will need to take lots more photo's before I am happy with them.

The same goes for the photo's below, which are the secondary colours in the colour wheel.

Then I ran out of time and so the primary colour wheel is missing.

Once I've finished the 3 NDS wheels I will re-photograph them and write an explanation that hopefully will make a lot more sense than the waffle I have written in the blog post :-)

Bank holiday and secrets

You might notice I am a bit quiet on the social networking front.
I've started to tackle my "To Do" list and realised that about 90% of it is secret projects I can't share.
I'm crocheting away in the back ground and it looks like I am doing nothing.
I'm really hoping I can start to reveal my Love Crochet project very soon, its very exciting and I had a eureka moment yesterday where the whole thing transformed into something I was happy and excited about.
Up until then I wasn't sure and considered starting it all over again.

Anyway I can share my bank holiday photo's.
My baby and his partner James came for a short weekend visit and we went on a family picnic to Landacre or Lanacre as it's know by the locals.
We had an amazing day, here are a few photo's :-)

Phil and I started off with the "walk of shame" down the hill to pick up our car's from Lynmouth.
There had been an auction at the Rising Sun to raise funds for the pre-schoolers at our local school.
Phil had driven there straight from work and I had driven the family down, I wasn't too bad, but Phil had had a really messy night and was suffering the morning after :-)
I love this photo, it really sums up the "walk of shame"

 

Then we drove across the moor to Lanacre and lay int he sun beside the river, basking in the sun.

 

Oh and yesterday I added some more yarn to Ebay, which you can find HERE

   

 

John Arbon's Open Mill Weekend

Daisy and I had a brilliant time over the weekend.
We went to help John and Juliet with their open mill weekend.

I thought I was going to sit and crochet and chat to customers, however it was so busy that I ended up on the floor selling with a huge queue of customers waiting patiently to pay.
I'd even been to see Juliet to get some yarn for a new version of Lorna Doone so that I could crochet with their yarn, sadly the new Lorna didn't really happen.
However I have almost finished crocheting her now and there will be a blog post when she is finished :-)

It was lovely to be in the wool show atmosphere without any of the pressures of setting up, breaking down and worrying about costs.
I'm already looking forward to helping again next year :-) 

   

  

Call for Kissing Circle testers

As I mentioned in the previous post I have been editing my Kissing Circles/Kaffe pattern, taking out NDS as the recommended yarn and adding a new yarn, its been a lot more complicated than I thought.
For one thing I wanted to make the pattern easier to understand, its an easy construction method, once you understand how it works, I don't think the original version explains the method very well. So I have completely re-written it.
I still haven't completely finished it as I need to recommend the exact colours of the new yarn which is Cascade 220, preferably the superwash version as it crochets up slightly smaller than the normal un-superwash version.

I want my patterns to be easy to follow, the crochet is simple but the colour placement is complicated.
And before I launch into the very long process of writing my book patterns I want to make sure I am not confusing my readers and that I am producing the best pattern that I possibly can.

      

 So I decided I would like to have to have it tested and I mentioned I was thinking of calling for testers on Instagram several weeks ago, the response was massive, so many people saying "pick me, pick me".

I have no idea how to pick, who to pick, how many to pick and don't want to disappoint any one, so I have come up with a cunning plan.

My plan is as follows

1 - You buy the pattern I want tested and you test it, you don't have to make the whole blanket, just a small swatch or beginnings of the blanket.
2 - You e-mail me your review, questions, comments, whats missing from the pattern, what you would like explained in more detail etc etc
It needs to be a e-mail rather than a blog/facebook/instgram comment, because of step 3.
You can find the e-mail address on the pattern or send me a e-mail via the contact me link in the side bar here on the blog.
3 - I send you 2 free patterns of your choice as a "Thank you"

I only need feedback on the patterns I have re-edited, at the moment it is only my Kissing Circles/Kaffe pattern, but in time I will work my way through my entire back catalogue, so there will be plenty of testing to do in the future.

You can find the new Kissing Circles/Kaffe pattern on ....

Love Crochet - HERE
Raverly has 2 versions (either version will do)
Kissing Circles - HERE
Kissing Kaffe - HERE
Etsy - HERE