Ermintrude - Pattern of the week & pattern editing

This week's Pattern of the Week is my Ermintrude crochet blanket.

Ermintrude has always been one of my favourite blankets, even though its slightly lacy, its also warm and cuddly and I love the way the flowers stick out above the surface.
Ermintrude was sold earlier this year and although I was sad to she her go, I was delighted she was going to a loving new home :-)
You can find the Ermintrude pattern on Ravelry -  HERE

Ermintrude is named after the cow that starred in the BBC children’s television programme The Magic Roundabout in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Ermintrude always had a flower sticking out the side of her mouth; the flowers on my blanket remind me of hers.
Size
Ermintrude measures approx. 70 x 50 ins.
Yarn
Fyberspates – Scrumptious DK or Vivacious DK (you can find your nearest stockist HERE)
Alternative Yarns
Easyknits – Deeply Wicked DK, Splendour DK. Skein Queen – Desire, Blissful Plum, Voluptuous
John Arbon Textiles - Knit by Numbers, Viola. The Little Grey Sheep - DK - Gotland DK
Cascade - Cascade 220 Sport. Knitpicks - Wool of the Andes. King Cole - Merino Blend DK
Hook
Crochet hook size 4.5 mm if you have a loose tension, 5 mm if you have a tight tension
The pattern contains the following…..
Detailed colour and yarn recommendations
Written and charted Motif instructions in UK and US terms.
Full coloured layout chart.

And pattern editing, always pattern editing, endless endless pattern editing.

When I closed NDS a year ago one of the things to do at the top of my to-do list was to re-edit all my crochet patterns to remove NDS and add new yarn recommendations.
A year onwards and I'm not even half way through.
I have 81 published patterns and have only edited about 25 of them, (that doesn't include the 4 books and motif patterns).
The process hasn't been helped by the fact I needed to finish the book and produce new designs at the same time.
I started off doing alternating the patterns between blankets, scarves and shawls, but I didn't seem to be achieveing much, so I've decided to concentrate on blankets first and then move onto scarves or maybe even garments, which are a bit more tricky as I need to re-do all the photo's.
I'm really proud to say I've almost finished editing all the blanket patterns to edit, there are only a couple left (Spyro & Starry Night) I should be able to get them finished by the end of next week, but hopefully a lot sooner.
And then I'm going to edit the 3 blanket patterns that are no longer for sale as they are so old. I wasn't going to edit them, but occasionally someone e-mails to ask where they can buy the pattern, so rather than leave them I've decided they need a re-vamp too.

Happy crocheting
love Amanda - off to edit more patterns :-)

Plankton Scarf - Pattern of the Week

I'm a little bit late writing this blog post, but better late than never :-)

This week's pattern is my Plankton crochet scarf, which you can find HERE

I made it in 2013 for my Madder Triangles book, it was a tribute to Sophie Digard and her amazing crochet scarves which are made with lots and lots of colours and very tiny motifs.
So I made Plankton with a lace yarn (800 metres per 100 gms), Sophie's yarn is even thinner.
You can use 4 ply instead of lace, but you will probably only need 3 rows of motifs instead of 4

After I started the scarf I realised the the centres of the motifs looked like Plankton's eye, Plankton is a character from Spongebob Square Pant's and as his name suggests he is a plankton.

The photographs are shot on Blacklands beach near Lynmouth, Exmoor, the model is my daughter Daisy, it was her 25th birthday and she has never let me forget the fact I made her work on her birthday :-)

A little bit tired

I'm a little bit tired and broken, we drove over 250 miles to spend the weekend with 2 of our bestest woolly friend's (Fyberspates and Chester Wool).

We haven't seen them for ages so had a lot to catch up on, the weekend was full of wool talk, plotting & planning, laughing and of course a lot of wine 😜

I didn't take many photos as I was too busy crocheting and talking about wool.

Yesterday on the way home we drove an extra 150 miles just to take a photo of the Pembrokeshire national park sign, sadly I don't have the photo as I was driving, so I've woken up this morning feeling my age.

I probably won't do much work today, so I'll do a blog post about this week's Pattern of the Week pattern tomorrow.

If you can't wait until then, it's my Plankton scarf, which you can find HERE

Operation Sea Slug - The Foreland

I'm still walking with Phil everyday or rather still staggering along behind him trying to catch up. Some nights I really don't enjoy it, such as tonight when it was wet & cold & dark. 

But some walks make up for the cold, dark, wet ones, such as last Sunday's walk.

We went up to the top of Countisbury Hill, overlooking the Foreland, it's one of my favourite places as the views are always amazing even when it's raining. 

It's also one of my favourite blanket shoot locations.

On Sunday it was bathed in soft late afternoon light.

 

Looking east towards Porlock and beyond, if you look closely you can see the moon rising.

Looking north across the Severn Sea (Bristol Channel) towards Wales.

 

And looking south towards the moor.