Cornucopia Crochet Blanket pattern

Just a quick blog post to tell you I have published Cornucopia.

Cornucopia was designs as a colour experiment; I wanted to explore the effect of subtle tonal and saturated colour in the same blanket.

I started with a skein of bright yellow “Skein Queen” and added extra colours that worked together from my stash.

After the first few rows motifs of the blanket I realised I had chosen fruity natural colours and so named it Cornucopia, which is the mythological “Horn of Plenty” which overflows with fruits and flowers.

The more I look at the blanket the more fruits I can see – strawberries, cherries, apples, mangos, limes, kiwi’s, oranges etc etc

You can find it on Etsy - HERE and Ravelry - HERE

Crochet colour rule breaking

Dear Crocheters

As you probably have realised by now I spend a lot of my social networking time on Instagram, after all I do mention it quite often :-)
I have discovered its a really handy for market research.
I can see what other people are crocheting, which colours and yarns are being used, which designs are in trend and what everyone else thinks about them.
Plus I love seeing what everyone else is making and sometimes get a bit carried away with my "likes"

I have slowly come to the realisation that there seem to be several unwritten rules that most crocheters follow.
I'm firmly convinced that not all rules are good and some of them need to be broken and are being broken by me, so I'm writing this blog post in the hope that some of you might join me in my rule breaking rebellion :-)
If you're not happy about breaking rules, please don't take this blog post too seriously, maybe its probably best you don't read any further as I respect your opinions and choices and really don't want to offend you.

The rules to be broken and the reasons why are as follows.....

Rule 1 - Baby colour's
All baby crochet items must be made in pastels, pink for girls, blue for boys and yellow for the unknown sex babies who haven't been born yet.
Although unknown sex babies can end up with a variety of neutral colours including brown!
Reasons for breaking Rule 1
Babies are stimulated by bright colours, just take a look at baby toys, lots and lots of bright colour, texture and noise to help stimulate a baby's development.
I've done a small amount of research into babies and colour, because I don't understand the whole pastel thing, having had 3 babies of my own I discovered pastel doesn't stay pastel very often and science seems to back up breaking the crochet pastel baby rule.
In fact I found one Doctor's website that even went as far as saying use soft pastel colours and you might as well blindfold your baby.

Rule 2 - Neutral same colour edging 
If you make a motif blanket you always need to  use a neutral colour to edge and join the motifs together, preferably black or white or sometimes brown and very occasionally dark green or orange!!!
Reasons for breaking Rule 2
Why??????
Both black and white kill colour, I've seen so many piles of beautifully coloured motifs murdered by their edging. The colours get lost and either look too saturated or too bleached.
All the blankets end up looking like they were made in the 1970's so unless you are purposely aiming for a retro/vintage look its time to try something different.
So if you want to edge all your motifs with a single colour why not pick out one of the colours you have already used, it will visually pull your blanket together rather than separate it into little boxes.

Rule 3 - Using the same yarn/colour as the designer
You must use exactly the same yarn and colours if you want to end up with a blanket as beautiful as the original made by the designer.
Reasons for breaking Rule 3
This rule has always caused a problem for me, as when I was the yarn supplier I couldn't provide the exact colours of the original.
I couldn't dye the same colour twice, even if I dyed it on the same day to the same recipe and I think most hand dyed yarn is nearly always slightly different shades from different dye lots and for that matter so is a lot of commercially dyed yarn, if you are a knitter its a huge problem and you should always buy from the same dye lot if you don't want to end up with stripes.
But if you are a crocheter who make motifs slightly different dye lots shouldn't be a problem.
AND..... if you want to make my blankets different yarn brands/fibres shouldn't be a problem either in fact they are preferable
I don't like flat colour, it has a dulling effect, I like lots of texture and complex colour which gives a blanket depth and detail and kind of mysterious as you never know what you will find if when you look really closely.
I've always made my blankets as scrap blankets, using whatever was the right colour, but most right colours were actually several different close colours due to my dyeing restrictions.
So I would recommend choose the colours from your stash and then add to them from which ever yarn manufacturer makes a similar colour yarn weight.

I've written Rule 3 in preparation to publishing Cornucopia this week as I know its going to cause a flurry of questions as to which yarn I recommend.
Coruncopia is made of several different shades of 10 core colours and uses Skein Queen, Easyknits, Drops Alpaca, Cascade Heritage Silk and some NDS. 

Love Amanda 

Love Crochet Summer CAL

Finally I can spill the beans on one of my secret projects :-)
Although they were actually spilt on Tuesday, I just haven't had the time to tell you :-)
The response has been phenomenal and on my part totally unexpected, I started to write this post before the CAL was launched and since then have been answering questions and lovely lovely comments, so haven't found the time to post.

I am really excited and proud to announce that my project/CAL with Love Crochet is live :-)
You can find more details HERE
 
I have designed 12 individual motifs, the colours for each blends into the colours of the next motif (I hope that makes sense)
Love Crochet will publish 2 of my motif designs each week on their blog for the next 6 weeks so at the end of September you will have all the designs and be able to make a blanket in one of three layouts, the one below is made with 6 motifs of each design.

Clever Love Crochet have produced a yarn pack which contains enough yarn to make the blanket layout pictured below, which happens to be my favourite :-)
You can find the yarn pack HERE
Although it sold out within a few hours of the CAL being launched, LC are working hard to re-stock, so you will need to check back and favourite the page and hopefully next week they will have more packs available.

I'm really looking forward to seeing your motifs

Photo dithering

As we live in an amazingly beautiful place we go out for a drive most weekends to discover new places on the moor, we normally have a mission.
For the past few weeks we have been on a hunt for elderberry trees, the flowers are out so they are easy to spot, Phil has been picking flowers for wine making, but we are trying to find a place with lots of trees that should have berries later on for later on in the year so Phil can pick them for more wine making.
Sometimes we look for places to just sit and enjoy, sometimes we look for places to do photo shoots in, so sometimes we carry a big bag of blankets and the camera just in case........
I'm really obsessive about finding the perfect blanket photography place and so far we haven't discovered it yet.

This weekend we went to a friend's allotment in a hidden valley to pick gooseberries for more wine making and on the way back home I took a few blanket photo's.
I like to have a good view as a backdrop, random blankets are good draped over a gate, but complex design blankets like Kaleidoscope need to be photographed in their entirety so need to be resting on a bank.
This week we found a couple of interesting gates, which were good for photographing Kissing Kaffe on.
In the first photo the blanket is in shade and too dark, so is going to the discard pile.
The bottom two are a bit better even though you can see the light through the blanket, I think a sheet under the blanket might cure the problem, but I keep forgetting to put one in the car.

I also took the below photograph of the blankets in a pile on the bonnet of the car, I was using it as a place to put the blankets while I took photos of other blankets.
I really like how clear they look on the car and think maybe I should do some more car/blanket photo's, its not very scenic unless you like Land Rover's (which I do), but the colours are almost perfect.
What do you think?
More car photo's with the blankets laid out like page 3 girls?
Or is a completely stupid idea?

 

And yesterday we went to Robbers Bridge in the Lorna Doone valley and lay in the sun by the river reading our books all afternoon, while the dogs bumbled around playing in the water and chasing butterflies, it was total bliss.

 

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......

Birthday and Cornucopia

Good sunny monday morning - :-)

I'm busy, busy, busy adding yarn to the Etsy shop, plus a million other things, so this is a instagram round up post and photo heavy.

I spent the whole of last week working away in the background on my secret Love Crochet project, which hopefully will be revealed in the next week or so.
 But I do have some non secret photo's to share.
On Tuesday I felt a bit rubbish so went to see Mandy at Amanda Janes cake shop for a cup of tea and photographed her amazing rainbow display cake, decorated by her glamourous assistant Kat.

On Wednesday I played with last weeks swatches and decided that the triangle swatch wasn't working, but the square one was.
I love the mix of chemical and natural colour, it adds a whole new dimension to my work, so I've decided to turn this swatch into a blanket.
I think I'm going to call it Cornucopia, because the colours are very fruity, plus my Dad had a yacht called Cornucopia in the 1980's.
However I have discovered the colours are almost impossible to photograph, so there will probably be a lot of wip photo's to come.
The ones below are almost right.

     

On Thursday Billy was forced to sit on some plastic bags full of my book blankets because I had been very thoughtless and not left them out for him to sit on.

On Friday Dais and I went for a pre-birthday Exmoor adventure.
She took me to Nutcombe Bottom to see the tallest tree in England.

And to Winsford Hill to see a rock in a shed (the rock is actually the 6th century Caratacus Stone)

Saturday was my birthday, Phil bought me some lucky cat's to add to my collection, one day I will have enough to fill a whole mantelpiece and maybe the luck to go with them.

And then we went on our annual birthday road trip, this year we went to Bude, the weather was appalling, we spent most of the drive in a wet and windy cloud, but we did have a lovely ice cream here on the beach.

 

And yesterday Phil and Adam and I had a lovely stroll along the Lyn Way for a Sunday lunch at the Cottage Inn, which actually turned out to be a lovely surprise birthday lunch with all our friends (apart from poor Dais who was working).
The Cottage Inn has recently been taken over by Pam and Gary, who used to run the Nartnapa Thai Resturant in Lynton.
If you are in the area and love Thai food the cottage is a must to visit, the whole village missed them like mad when they went home to Thailand to spend Christmas with Pam's family :-)

Secrets and colour

Last week was all about pattern writing, this time for the book.
I finally have a book skeleton, its very scary to see it printed out and in a display book, but its also very exciting and beginning to feel real.
I did take a photo of some wool on top of the display book so I could show you, but I must of deleted it off the camera as I can't find it.

I have almost finished Book Blanket no 8 (only 2 more to go :-) and I discovered I had made far too many of these
They are far too pretty to go to the discard pile, so I thought I'd make a new blanket for me to self publish and did a little bit of swatching.
I can't really spend much time developing it further at the moment as I have too many other things to do, but I'm quite happy with the swatch (even though the photo is a bit rubbish)

      

As I've almost finished no 8, I need some yarn for no 9, so I acquired some Knit by Numbers DK from the John Arbon Textiles shop round the corner.

There are a few colours missing, one of them is the pink, which is being spun shortly, so I'm a bit reluctant to start the blanket without it.

As I've started writing the book, I need to start working on swatches for illustration, I've already finished 2 of the colour wheels, so needed to make the last one, so started playing with the yarn in my colour wheel basket.
And subsequently found another pile of tiny motifs to play with, which ended up with another idea for a blanket I don't have time to make.

        

This one will incorporate a skein of Easyknits and Skein Queen, which are both saturated colour, but I think will look amazing with the natural colours.
The motifs are going to be tiny, the squares in the photo below are only 2 inches wide, so I will have to make millions for a blanket, so its going to be a very long process.

So I have 2 forbidden blankets, that I shouldn't be working on as I don't have the time, and it was a huge struggle to put them to one side.

But luckily I am easily distracted, and was especially distracted when the yarn arrived for my secret Love Crochet project.

   

I can't tell you much about the project yet, I've finished half the crochet bit and am going to start writing the patterns to day.
But I can tell you about the yarn and give you the colour numbers so you can start collecting.
The yarn is Lang Baby Cotton,  its a perfect time to buy as its reduced from £4.25 to £3.80
You can find it HERE
The colours are as follows 14 (yellow), 16 (lime), 116 (apple), 74 (jade), 79 (duck egg), 78 (turquoise), 46 (violet), 7 (lilac), 19 (pale barbie), 55 (pink), 128 (soft red), 27 (orange)
The colours don't actually have names, they are only listed as numbers on the site, the names are mine and hopefully will make it easier for you to choose.
Hopefully I'll be able to tell you more about the project next week.

And yesterday I actually took some time off work and we went for a afternoon stroll to Lynmouth for an ice cream.
I have never seen the tide so low, the photo below will give you an idea of how far you needed to walk to get to the sea.
If you click on the photo its should bring up an enlargement, its a panoramic photo which makes the river look wonky, its straight in real life.
If you look carefully at the base of the hill you can just make out the buildings at Lynmouth.