Foxgloves

I've been working on a new blanket and developing new way of working.
My lovely crochet friend came to see me about 10 days ago, we spent a whole day chatting crochet. Some of the discussion was about the way I sell my work.
I've slowly come to realise that since the closure of NDS last year I no longer have to keep my blankets to use on the stand to sell yarn and that I should sell them instead.
You can find them HERE on my website.

My friend is the proud new owner of a couple of my blankets and she pointed out that I don't do anything to promote blanket sales and she's right!
My blankets are expensive, but as I pay myself half the minimum wage I think I've priced them more than reasonably.
I understand they are out of most peoples budgets and so I don't expect to sell many.
But during the past week or so I have come up with some idea's on how to make my work more available.
The idea's have evolved during the making of Foxgloves

Foxgloves are inspired by the flowers on the moor, the wild foxgloves are beginning to come into flower and the colours are based on the flowers and their surroundings.
I've crocheted and frogged and crocheted and frogged over and over again, developing my ideas as I go.
The photo's below are a of photo diary of my process

Foxgloves started off as a pile of yarn and my attempt to use a square that didn't contain a circle.

However I didn't like the squares, so the circles crept back. At this point in time it was going to be a scarf, with stripes of squares fading into the background green.

And then it morphed into a blanket and I decided to work the stripes corner to corner instead.

Even though I loved the original colour scheme, the stripes faded into the background and so I used an alternative colour scheme and turned the stripes into zig zags.

Which left me with a discard pile of swatches. I had a brainwave and decided I could mount or frame and sell the swatches as small pieces of wall art.

So I decided to make 2 blankets at the same time, one with the original colours and second more muted colour scheme, the layout would be identical, so I would need to make both blankets and publish them at the same time in the same pattern.

However this morning I've decided to just make the muted version, which means I'm left with a big discard pile of swatches to frame or mount and sell.

I still love the first colour way so I'll photograph it and include it in the pattern.

As I've had so much fun playing with the different colour schemes I've decided that it might be nice for you to have the chance to experiment with your own. So I've decided to include a couple of colouring sheets for you to play with.

I've coloured in bits of the layout so you can see the structure, if you use the same yarn you have a starting place to work out your colour scheme around. 

Obviously I need to do some development of the colouring pages, so its a work in progress, but the photo above gives you an idea of what I mean.

If you can't wait for the pattern and want to start collecting colours, you will need to buy 1 skein of  Fyberspates - Vivacious 4 ply Sea Green (the green circles)

And 1 skein of  Fyberspates - Scrumptious 4 Ply - Teal (blue circles)

I've also used 1 skein of Fyberspates - Vivacious 4 ply - Mixed Magentas as a background colour, so if you want to do the same colour way as the original you will need to use it as a core colour to base your collection around.

You can find the list of Fyberspates stockists HERE

You can use any 4 ply yarn, just as long as its a similar metreage (360 - 400 metre's per 100 gs)

My sample blanket includes some Skein Queen, Easy Knits, The Little Grey Sheep and John Arbon Exmoor Sock.

The pattern will be available as soon as I've finished crocheting the sample and the swatches will be available on Etsy as soon as I've worked out how to frame or mount them.

Love Amanda - off to colour in some charts :-)

Exmoor Stars, Catalina & Geminds

Good morning from slightly sunny Exmoor

I've finally published my Exmoor Stars blanket pattern booklet, its taken me longer than I thought because I've been dithering about how many patterns to include, originally I had planned 3 blankets & 2 scarves, but I struggle to make any else but blankets, so the scarves have been a problem. I've only designed one.
So rather than wait until inspiration strikes I decided to just include the blankets and publish the scarf separately.

So here is Exmoor Stars.......

 

Exmoor Stars contains patterns for my Stargazer Zodiac blanket, Sagittarius A Black Hole blanket and Catalina Comet blanket. The blankets are all inspired by the stars seen over the moor on dark nights.

You can find it HERE on Ravelry.

The blankets are also available as single patterns, just follow the links below to take you to the individual blanket's page.

 

Catalina Comet - HERE

Sagittarius A Black Hole - HERE

 

Stargazer Zodiac - HERE

 All the patterns contain ....

Detailed yarn and colour recommendations

Written and charted motif patterns, in both UK and US terms.

A colour chart and layout key.

And step by step charts, which hopefully make it easier to construct the blanket.

And this is the Geminids Meteor scarf, beautifully modelled by my son on Woolacombe beach.

Geminids is inspired by a meteor shower that can be seen over the moor every December.

It was designed to be a unisex scarf, I have made it using EASYKNITS Smoke and Big Boy wool heavy 4 ply yarn (300 metres per 100 gms)  

As I intended the scarf to be unisex I thought it was appropriate to use Jon's yarns as he is my only male dyer friend, his colours are heavily saturated, big and bold, perfect for such a structured design.

However if you prefer you can make it in softer girly colours or in a lighter weight 4 ply (400 metres per 100 gms)

You can find Geminids Meteor scarf - HERE

The pattern also contains the same list of instructions/information, as the blanket patterns above.

Happy crocheting 

Amanda

Pinterest quilt/crochet art inspiration

I wrote a long waffly pretentious blog post about being a crochet artist, but decided to delete it and just show you these photo's of quilt art that inspire and excite me instead.
If you want to see more have a look at my "quilts" board on Pinterest.
I use tend to use Pinterest for inspiration, so my boards are full of random images of the colours and shapes that I feature in my designs.

What do you think?
Wouldn't it be amazing if the crochet world had artists such as these to inspire us?

 

Betty Busby

 

Karen Kamenetzky

 

Alicia Merrett

Kathy York

Kathy's quilt could almost be crochet, but I have included it because I love the way she has used colour.

Monthly "Buy one, get one free"

Sadly I haven't had time to prepare my Ravelry "Pattern of the week" this week.
I've been busy working on the last few edits of the book and trying to finish the last Exmoor Star's blanket, so I have something new to publish.
So rather than abandoning my pattern collector's completely and disappoint you again I've decided to turn "Pattern of the week" into a monthly "Buy one, get one free" offer.
It means if you are not keen on the weekly pattern or you have already bought it you can still take advantage of the discount.
The discount can be used for all my patterns including the books.
There will be a new code each month, this month's is ....
rainbowapril16
The code is active now and will run out on the 30th of April, just add 2 patterns to your shopping cart, go to checkout, add the code and you will only be charged for one.
I will post a new code each month, so check in on the first of May to find out May's code

You can find my Ravelry store HERE

Happy crocheting
Love Amanda

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.

Pattern of the Week - Lecchi crochet blanket

This week's pattern is Lecchi.
You can find it on Ravelry HERE

In 2012 we went on holiday to Italy with our very dear friends Fyberspates & Chester Wool, we stayed in a village called Lecchi.

I had taken my current project and as much yarn as I could physically fit into the car, while sitting, relaxing under olive & pine trees in the Tuscan sun I decided that I didn't like what I was working on so started playing with colour and triangles.

 

 

It didn’t take long for me to realise that the very simple triangle I was mindlessly playing with had huge potential, the colours glowed in the dappled sunlight and I loved the way they fitted together. I spent the rest of the holiday making triangles out of the colours I had, it took us 3 days to drive home and when I wasn’t driving I was sitting crocheting with a lap full of orange and pink triangles. 

In fact I loved the triangles so much that Lecchi became the first pattern in my Madder Triangles e-book.

Lecchi was first published in the very first edition of Simply Crochet, I was really proud to see it on the very first cover.

Destination Amanda Perkins - Crochet Colour Wheels

Dear Blog Tour travellers

Its lovely to welcome you here at my destination on Exmoor, North Devon in the UK
Exmoor is a beautiful, wild and windy moor bordering the Bristol Channel in the bottom South West corner of England.

I've thought long and hard about what to write for this special blog post and decided to write it about choosing colours for scrap blankets and colour wheels.
My new book Rainbow Crocheted Blankets comes out in September 2016 and this blog post will hopefully be useful for people who are planning to buy it.
If you are interested in the book and would like more infomation, please sign up for my mailing list, you can find the form in the side bar. 

These days a lot of blanket designs use a specific yarn, but these can work out to be expensive, so to help with cost I try to write my blanket designs as scrap blankets.
Scrap blankets not only help you use some of your existing stash, but can also contain lots of memories of past projects and help you use the precious leftovers of a favourite yarn that you don't want to throw away.
But scrap blankets can also be a bit daunting if you aren't confident with colour, so I've included a bit of colour theory below.

When I'm making a rainbow blanket I base my colours around a colour wheel.
I find a colour wheel a perfect way to experiment.

I start off choosing 3 primary colours.
I prefer to use gold, magenta and cerulean blue for my colour wheel rather than the normal colour wheel colour's, because they make much prettier secondary and tertiary colours.

Then I add the secondry colours in between the primary's.
The secondry colours are a mix of the primary colours for example yellow & blue make green blue & red make purple and red and yellow make orange.

And lastly I add the tertiary colours.

The tertiary colours are a mix of a primary & secondry colour, for example blue & green make blue/green which could be yarns named jade teal, aqua, azure, or yellow & green make yellow/green which could be named lime, chartreuse.

I keep my wheels as samples, as I like to refer back to them and sometimes the colour wheels become something new.

I am running a "Buy one, get one free" offer on all my patterns bought in my Ravelry store.
Simply put 2 patterns in your shopping cart, add the following discount code and you will only have to pay for one of them.
Code - Crochetexpress2016
The offer lasts from now until the 1st of April 2016.

Good luck and have fun :-)
Love Amanda