Harlequin wip

I will be selling John Arbon Textiles "Knit by Numbers DK" on my stand at Yarndale and if I don't have a blanket that uses KBN then its slightly pointless having the yarn.
The blanket is called Harlequin, because of the shape of the motif, also because anyone who knows John will know that he has a few Harlequin type similarities.

Yarndale is only about 9 weeks away, so my blanket needs to be made super quick and I have decided to document its progress and making.
So this is last week's progress .......

Day 1 - Wednesday 29th of July  
I went to see the lovely Juliet and stole 12 skeins of her and John's Knit by Numbers.

    

Wednesday afternoon and night - I wound 2 balls and crocheted 110 round 1's.

Day 2 - Thursday 30th July 
I wound another 2 balls and organised the round 1's into colours and crocheted all 110 round 2's

Day 3 - Friday 31st of July  
I wound another 5 balls and organised the round 2's into colours and crocheted 55 round 3 & 4's

      

Day 4 and 5 - Saturday the 1st and Sunday the 2nd of August

I didn't really do much at all, because I actually allowed myself to enjoy the weekend.
On Saturday morning we went to Lynton farmers market at the town hall, then in the evening we went to watch the raft race at Lynmouth and spent Saturday night dancing in the moonlight till midnight in the wet grass at the Beggars Roost Inn, behaving like 50 year old teenagers with our friends.
Yesterday morning I walked up Hollerday Hill with Juliet and spent the afternoon with Phil reading our books in the beautiful sunny beer garden at Hunters Inn.

But I did manage to wind the last 3 balls and crochet another 32 round 3 & 4's.

So now onto week 2, lets see where I am before next weekend, as we will be going to a wedding on the edge of the moor and do lots more behaving like 50 year old teenagers, I don't envisage much crochet happening :-)

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