The blue blanket

 

Today I am starting the blue blanket. It will be for Lucas, and the choice or colours is inspired by the Turkish Mediterranean Sea. A wave to take home.

After having knitted with Stylecraft's Special DK I don't think I will be back to the other cheap acrylics (I still have few balls in my stash, but I will be liminting these to the making of toys, doll's clothes and little accessories for children). The shades I am using are aspen, spring green, aster, cloud blue, sherbet and turquoise.

I will be knitting 15cm squares in garter stitch to make it reversible. To start, I am liminting myself to plain squares, but I might add stripes and texture if needed.

Granny stripes in Turkey

We have just arrived from Turkey. The first thing I packed for the holidays was the granny stripes blanket that I had started a couple of days before, together with my hook and the necessary yarn. And the first thing I unpacked on my return was a finished blanket full of new memories...A hot burning sun and pomegranate trees, warm evenings in the terrace, happy children soaked in watermelon, a warm sea with everchanging shades of blue, olive trees and crispy tomatoes.

I bought the yarn as suggested by Lucy in her pattern. The yarn is Stylecraft's Special DK. It is 100% acrylic. The shades are beautiful and the yarn is soft to the touch, a pleasure to crochet.

I will stock up this yarn to have it always at hand. After having worked with different cheap acrylics (all brands are priced equally), this one is definitely my favourite. Among the brands I have worked with, there is Patons Fab DK, which seems bulkier compared to this one (I would use a 4mm hook with PatonsFab, while I use a 3.5mm with Stylecraft's), the shades are very nice. The only downside is that it feels somewhat rough to the touch. Then there is Robin DK, which doesn't feel very soft either. The look of this yarn is a little 'messy'. While Stylecraft's seem to have all the fibers in order, this one doesn't, and they stick out from the main yarn, giving it an unpolished/opaque look. Sirdar's Hayfield Bonus DK looks much better in that sense. It is very similar to Stylecraft's. The 'messiness' is low, and the yarn still shows a nice shine. It is soft to the touch, and I would say that the best feature is the twist: firm and tidy, and stays in place, so the yarn rarely untwists. Palette yarns are ok, but they differ a lot from batch to batch/colour to colour. I have a couple of colours in my stash which look as good as Stylecraft's, others similar to PatonsFab, some like Robin DK...

Enough yarn talk. The finished blanket looks like this

I put care in making the sides of the same shades to give it a cleaner frame. The edge consists of 4 rows of double crochet (UK, in US terms single crochet), 3 lilac and the last one pink:

I used a 3.5mm crochet hook to make it more dense and I tried to make colour graduations towards a main strong colour. I am very happy with the result! Emilia is now the happy owner of a cosy blanket :)

'Belle'

And here is the doll! I crocheted it for my daughter. I am very proud of it, as I didn't follow any pattern :)

Head and body are crocheted in one piece, while arms and legs were crocheted serparately. I used Patons Fab DK. For the eyes and mouth I used also Patons Fab, for the nose embroidery thread, and the cheeks are two felt circles. So here you have princess Belle, wearing her everyday jumper...

And in her party dress...

Update

It has been a while since my last post! I suppose this is the time of the year when I slowly start getting more active with my knitting and crafts.
The school holidays gave me some time to do craft projects with the children, and brought me back to it. I tidied up the 'craft' room (the unused dining-room), and finished a couple of things. Among them, there is Emilia's doll. I will have to wait till she comes back from granny's house to take a picture of it and post it.

I am also starting to get  into amigurumi. They are very cute little creatures that the children (and I) love. I will be posting pictures of my first steps into them soon.

The spring/summer put the yarn away and brought the gardening. It has been a brilliant summer so far. As I always say, if summers were this good, Britain would be a different country. However: I was watching a BBC documentary about camping in Britain, and someone made a very interesting point:
'Complaining about the rain when you are camping is like complaining about the traffic when you are driving in central London. It's gonna happen, it's a fact of life. You'vew got to be hearty about these things, you've got to face all the things that are not going to be perfect, and you are gonna have to improvise your way through...and that are ones of the great benefits of camping...But if it rains a lot even I wouldn't say you are having a good time, 7 days and 7 nights of rain can strip a mind of reason..'
This is what I rescue about living in a place like this one. I still have a hard time going out when the weather is not perfect. However, most British people do! Rain is not a deterrent. They are going to have a good time, come rain or shine. That is quite an admirable trait of character, I think. Of course, we all have our limits :)

Going back to the lovely summer, I thought I will post some of the results of my gardening. We had a busy time at the allotment, and got our first harvest. The garden at home is looking great too.
The Iris I planted 2 years ago finally flowered at the end of May. We enjoyed the flowers for a couple of weeks, as they kept coming.

 We have hundreds of bees. We think the harsh winter killed quite a lot of them, as they took a good while to appear in reasonable numbers. Fortunately now they are back! This is one of the first ones to visit us this year:

I also designed the flower baskets. They are looking great. This picture was taken at the beginning of July, a month ago. Now they are even bigger, they will touch the floor very soon...

And finally, a picture of my boggy shady flowerbed. I am so proud of having finally found the way to make it look good. This is the 3rd year of trying, and I think I finally got it!

One last picture, for your enjoyment: a little fairy I found fluttering in the garden...

Triinu Scarf

Today I started the Triinu Scarf by Nancy Bush. I got a little bit bored of the sock, so I decided to start this project I had in the queue. I am using Rowan's Kidsilk Haze in a brown/greenish shade that I bought half price at a yarn shop sale:

The first few rows of the pattern look promising so far! I will post a picture soon.

Socks

 The socks are looking pretty good! I had a false start, as I realised that the size was too small. I had miscounted the stitches, so I had to start it again. Now they might be too big, but that's ok: hopefully they will be both (right and left foot) ready for next winter!  I am slowly getting used to 4 needles. I had problems at the beginning with the rows at the needle changing points, but tugging the yarn firmly seems to do the job.

Some finished projects

I should post here some of my finished projects. I started knitting when I was very little. My granmother was a knitter, crocheter, seamtress and taylor (she lived from that). She taught me as soon as I showed an interest. I used to knit my jumpers as a teenager. Today it seems to be different (or may be because I am in a different country/culture?), but in those days (we are talking early 80's), if you wanted to have a nice jumper to wear, you had to knit it yourself. Or may be that was the way it was in my family! I also learnt to crochet. My crocheting was mostly supported by the teaching of a different 'granny', my godmother's mum. I remember random knittings along my life: a blue jumper when I was 16, a little jumper for a puppy I had when I was 20 (I remember alternating knitting and excercises while I was preparing for an exam -I studied Physics-), a cardigan and a jumper for my baby son...wait! I have pictures of that! :)

This is me knitting a pink and lilac cardigan...which was left unfinished when our doctor said: 'Did I said to you it was a girl? Gee, I was wrong!'.

This is the little jumper. I had forgotten about the booties, now I remember! Eventually I will get enough time to do a scrapbook...when the children leave home!

Lucas taken by suprise wearing the cardigan I knitted for him...

Ok, I got you, you are taking a picture of me!

I took up crochet/knitting back again a couple of years ago, again to do stuff for the children. I knitted a lovely little baby doll for Emilia (from a knitting magazine, when I have more time I might add some pics and references), a pirate doll for Lucas, a Snake for Lucas:

and I crocheted some clothes for Emilia's baby doll (the green version is still unfinished. I am thinking about decorating it with little flowers or something):

The pattern for this 'Crochet Baby Dress - Solomon's Knot' and hat were scaled from patterns by Teresa Richardson which you can find in her very, very helpful blog (it is worth a visit!). Most patterns and tutorials come with videos, which are clear and straightforward. Below you can see the same dress and hat in grass green...

And finally, a project that I enjoyed enormously, my first lace knit:

The pattern is from the Lilac leaf Shawl designed by Nancy Bush, which appears in her book 'Knitted Lace of Estonia'. I used Rowan Kidsilk Haze, and it worked really well. Soon I will start my second lace project, the Peacock tail and leaf Scarf. For the moment, I am focusing on my first pair of socks :)

Sock trial

I am starting to knit socks. I have lots of lovely sock yarn, but I have never knitted a sock before. So I decided to start with the ‘Socks 101’ at Knitty.com. I think I never worked with 4 needles before, it took me a while to get it going! Finally, after many false starts, here it is, my little sock trial.

A poem

I love Shel Silverstein. I found this book in good old Borders, when it was still alive. We used to love going there, the children and I, and with hubby on the weekends. We would browse for hours and sometimes we would find little gems, like the book where this poem comes from:

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

I like that...to walk with a walk that is measured and slow...