Blanket report - July 2015

I started work on my book in January 2014 and for the past 18 months I have been crocheting secret book blankets.
Along side the book I have also run 2 secret blanket clubs, the Kaleidoscope in 2014 and the Zodiac which is still running.
I thought I'd give you a progress update of the secrets and other designs.

Its been a struggle not to show you what I'm working on as I like to share what I am doing because I need feedback and its really helpful to know if you like it and if I'm going in the right direction.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc etc are incredibly important to designers like myself.
I like to constantly talk to you and show you new pictures of what I am working on and keep you interested and excited,  the problem is if I don't have anything new to show you, so you might end up bored with waiting and when the book comes out next year everyone may have forgotten all about it.
So it is essential that I design and self publish new patterns alongside working on all the secret designs.
However due to the book its not as easy as it should be, last year I only managed to self publish one new blanket pattern, Kissing Circles

 

But at Christmas I published Kaleidoscope club blanket pattern, as the club had finished and all the members knew the secret.

  

I also revealed this photo of my 2014 blankets, which gives you a very sneaky peak, but hopefully doesn't give too much away.

 

 So far this year I have only self published one pattern, which is actually a follow up of the Kissing Circles pattern, I wanted to re-make the original blanket as it wasn't big enough and I wanted to try a different colour lay out. 

Its called Kissing Kaffe and is incorporated in the Kissing Circles pattern, so to be honest isn't really that new, but I loved making it and am very happy with the result :-)

 For the last couple of months I have been working on a secret project for Love Crochet which should be revealed next week, I'm afraid there aren't any sneaky peak photo's, you'll just have to wait and see :-)

I'm still making book blankets, I thought I'd put together the photo below, it shows you my book blanket progress, at the moment I'm working on number 9, so after that I only have one left and I'm hoping its going to be a grand finale with fireworks and bells and whistles and sparkles - well maybe not sparkles but you know what I mean :-)

I'm also working on a new blanket to self publish which I have mentioned previously, its called Cornucopia due to the colours being very fruity, this is my progress since I started a month ago.

My cunning plan is to finish it and publish it by the end of July and then quickly make a new DK blanket which I can take to Yarndale at the end of September!

Wish me luck, I'm going to need it!!

     

 

 

Finished

This week's blog post is a Instagram round up of the last couple of weeks.

       

 I finally finished both Zodiac blankets, plus my Love Crochet project that I'm not allowed to talk about yet, but it will be starting mid month, so I'll do a blog post as soon as I get the go ahead.

 

And did lots and lots of work on Cornucopia, I realised I haven't self published a pattern since January, so I'm hoping to get this finished and published by the end of July.

 

We went for several dog walks and I took some photo's of moorland flowers

      

Some time ago I nagged John Arbon into spinning some of my NDS pink colour in Knit by Numbers It was spun a couple of weeks ago and I finally got to test a couple of skeins, there will be a proper blog post about this in the near future as Frankie, who works for John took some photo's of it being spun, but she's on holiday at the moment, so can't send them to me.

Plus I had a long discussion with Juliet (Mrs John Arbon) about the possibility of me stocking and selling Knit by Numbers DK, as it has become my "go to" DK yarn.

 

And we went to The Crown, the cosy village pub just round the corner at the bottom of Lydiate Lane and I photographed some of the Mick Cawston murals, Mick Cawston was a very well known local artist and painted a lot of murals in The Crown.

The Crown and the murals are well worth a visit :-)

The end :-)

The Joy of Wool

I think you might of realised by now that I am a yarn snob, I only use natural fibres.
I would say 100% natural fibres, but I will stretch to a small percentage of synthetic fibre in a yarn as long as its not over 25%.

I spend a lot of time social networking and looking at pictures of crochet via Pinterest and Instagram.
I am sad to see the numbers of crocheters who seem to use synthetics and nothing else, who not only exclusively use synthetic but seem oblivious to the possibilities of using other fibre types.
At the moment there seems to be a trend to use a certain brand (which I will not name),
Recently on several occasions I have been e-mailed by crocheters wanting to know which colours of that particular brand do I use in my blankets......sigh.......

So rather than dwell on the over reliance of synthetic for crochet I am going to share my joy of wool.

Wool is warm, malleable and cuddly.
It can be soft, sophisticated and refined such as a expensive merino or rustic and full of character such a rare breed hand spun wool.
Some of the more rustic yarns still smell of sheep and have lanolin left in them, for some people this would be a bad thing, but I love the fact that I am working with an almost living fibre.
Part of my enjoyment of crochet is the yarn itself and how it feels in my hands, I love the warmth and texture and tones of colour, even the chemically dyed cheaper wool yarns have a depth I haven't seen in a synthetic yarn.

Incidentally I should add I don't use synthetics now, but I have done in the past and so have some knowledge.

There are several misconceptions about wool.

1 - Its expensive
Yes - Indie dyer/Specialist spun wool is quite a bit more expensive than synthetic yarn.
But there are budget ranges of wool that are perfect for blankets, which are slightly more expensive than the cheaper synthetics, but you could still make one of my smaller blankets for under £50.
Recently I have been exploring cheaper wool ranges to recommend for my blankets, the first 2 brands I have discovered are Drops and Cascade, both these companies have a huge range of yarns and colours that are well worth exploring.
However there are many companies who spin cheaper wool yarns, if you search Wool DK on Love Crochet, you will find a world of wool waiting for you to discover.

But if you want to treat yourself to something special, go and have a look at one of the following yarn companies, they all sell beautiful wool, they are all my friends and I love their yarn and thoroughly recommend all of them.
John Arbon Textiles, Skein Queen, Easyknits, Knitting Goddess, Fyberspates and Posh

2 - It is not machine washable.
Completely wrong!!
Look for the superwash wool's, in the past I dyed quite a few for NDS and made several garments that were bunged in the washing machine time and time again.
However you will need to check the washing instructions or ask the manufacturer before you throw them in the wash.

3 - Wool is itchy/scratchy
Some of the cheaper wool yarns aren't as soft as they could be, but then so are some of the cheaper synthetics.
I have read comments on Ravelry from knitters/crocheters advising others that if you wash your itchy synthetic yarn with fabric or hair conditioner then it softens up!!
The yarn isn't getting any softer, all you are doing is coating it with a conditioner that makes it feel soft!
In my experience wool gets softer over time and synthetic gets harder.
I have several blankets made by my Granny about 30 or 40 years ago, she didn't actually buy yarn, instead she went to jumble sales and searched out the hand knits, frogged them and re-made them as blankets.
The synthetic yarns are rock hard and the natural yarns are still soft, obviously synthetic has come a long way in 40 years, but even still how are we to know what it will feel like in 40 years time.
If you are putting all your time and love into  heirloom blanket, you still want it to be just as beautiful in 40 years as the day you finished it.

4 - Wool is produced by cruel sheep farmers who mistreat their animals.
Recently PETA have produced a disgusting video of sheep being shorn in a very cruel and barbaric fashion, I will not link it here as I find it so upsetting, but if you want to watch it you can find it easily on a goggle search.
There are "bad pennies" in every industry and PETA has focussed on one of them, the practises seen in the video should be outlawed and the people performing them should be prosecuted and banned from contact with animals.
However I live in an area where sheep are the main farming crop.
I've watched sheep being shorn on numerous occasions and have never seen a sheep treated in this way, I find it outrageous that all sheep farmers have been tarred with the same brush, it makes me very angry.
I could write pages and pages of venom aimed at PETA for producing such a one sided argument and the damage it will do to farmers who are ethical and do the right thing.
I have supported PETA in the past as I am an animal lover and believe in animal rights, but I also support my local farmers who are eking out their living in a difficult place and treat their animals with care and compassion.

I've also read articles on how animal farming destroys the environment and how we should only be using vegan yarns.
I have very strong feelings about so called vegan yarns, but I need to stop writing this blog post before it becomes too much of a rant and leave you with the following Bamboo link as a counter argument, it may be extreme, but its no more extreme than the PETA video!.

Zodiac

Good morning from a very gloomy damp Lynton.
There are 2 pigeons on the roof opposite that looks like its been through the washing machine.
They are very tiny in the photo, but it will give you an idea.

I spent a lot of last week working on the two Zodiac club blankets.
I designed the pattern over a year ago, it was incredibly complex as it contains all the Zodiac constellations laid out in roughly the right order and placements, the maths involved took weeks and weeks, luckily Valerie did an amazing job and patiently walked me through it all.
Although at one point she discovered I'd miss counted the number of motifs and all the numbers were wrong, luckily it was quite early on :-)
The blanket was designed for a NDS crochet blanket club, members who signed up for the club received all the yarn needed and 12 instalments of the pattern to run throughout the whole of 2015.
We started selling memberships this time last year, a lot of knitters wanted to join in and asked for the knitted version, so Valerie took on the job of turning my crochet motifs into knitted motif patterns.
And Phil took on the job of knitting all the motifs, but I agreed to sew in all his ends and join them together to form the blanket.

We both finished January in time to exhibit at Yarndale in September, so we could promote the club.

Phil started knitting motifs in the autumn, but I left my crochet version until the winter because I was making book blankets.
I decided to make the blankets side by side, so they were always at the same stage, this meant I could photograph them together on the same day in the same light.
Phil has always been several months ahead of me with his motifs as he just kept churning them out and didn't stop to do something else.
I had a panic in January when I realised I hadn't even started to think about February, so I finished both blankets up to April and put them aside again.

Then I had another panic in April as I hadn't started May, so again finished both blankets up to August.

 

(This is a photo of July, the pattern instalment hasn't been sent to the members yet, but I'm sure they will forgive me for the sneaky peak :-)

I've been half heartedly doing bits here and there.

      

And to be honest making the Zodiac's have become a chore, I get bored working on old designs, as they are never as good as the new designs in my head and I want to move forwards rather than stagnate or go backwards.
I had begun to dread working on the Zodiac's as they were taking ages, making a single crochet blanket on its own would of been fine, I would of finished making it months ago, but having to sew in Phil's ends and construct his blanket as well made the job twice as long and far more difficult.
I'm not happy with the finish of the knitted blanket, but I'm a newbie at knitted blankets so really have to expect that it won't be as good as the crochet one.

I gave us both a deadline and decided he had to finish the knitting and I had to finish the crochet by August, he finished the knitting a couple of weeks ago, he's done so well and I'm really proud of him and his knitting achievement.
But I think he's really missing making his Zodiac as he still hasn't decided on what to knit next and keeps flicking through his pattern books looking for inspiration, maybe I ought to suggest another blanket to him.

Since he finished the knitting I have been very aware of my looming deadline, I had to force myself to finish the September installment, it seemed to take forever and I did a lot of moaning. I eventually finished September last week and only got round to photographing them yesterday.

I have had an awful lot of self doubt about the Zodiac's, the members are very quite and I'm still not sure if they like the blankets, part of me thinks that the Zodiac's have failed as a design, maybe they were too complex and the pattern is too random, its certainly not symmetrical and I like symmetrical best.
 But two things have happened that have given me back my enthusiasm and the excitement I need to finally finish both blankets.

The first is the photo below that I posted on Instagram during the week, its had a massive amount of likes and lovely comments.
Its of the edge of the crochet blanket.

The second is the realisation that the end is very near and now I can't wait finish them both.
 Last night I added the October motifs to the knitted blanket and am half way to adding the October crochet motifs, I would be working on the Zodiac's now but I have to write this blog post and do some charts for another project......