Sunday 26 February 2012

Blue Ripple Blanket Ta Da

Let me introduce you to my new mellow blue ripple blanket. Ta Da!
It's kept me occupied since early December but now it's all done.  A bit of a relief as I found crocheting a blanket this size in one stitch a bit tiring on the hands.
I followed Lucy at Attic 24's Neat Ripple Pattern.  A starting chain of 20 multiples of 14 plus 3 stitches makes the blanket wide enough to drape either side of my king-size bed.  110 rows means it is long enough to reach the pillow-line.
My colour palette was inspired by a Lighthouse-Ripple-Blanket on Flickr and I originally planned to use random colours.  But it's tougher than I thought to choose colours that go just right together.
So once I hit on something that worked I stayed with it and kept going.  I am very happy with the final result, it feels very balanced with three sets of colour repetition in the middle and matching start and finish rows.
Completed in Stylecraft Special DK with a 3.75ml hook.  Here's my mid-project yarn collection.

From bottom to top, colours are:
Aster
Cloud Blue
Silver
White
Midnight
Denim
Silver
White
Sherbert
Colours purchased but never used:
Royal (blue)
Graphite

Ripple Stats
110 Rows (2 rows for each coloured band)
Weighing in at 1.2 kg.
125 cm long by 185 cm wide.
Using just over 3.5 Kilometres of yarn.
I used Stylecraft Special DK acrylic yarn throughout, approximately 12 balls of wool.
Total yarn cost, only £18.
At least 45 hours work, over the last three months.

Well worth it.
Nellie P

Wednesday 22 February 2012

It's Competition Time

In January I spotted a competition on the Crabtree & Evelyn web site, something I could use my crochet skills for and perhaps win something.

The 50 winning entries would each receive a £100 giftcard.  They would then be put together to form a digital Mother's Day Patchwork, which would then appear in the window of every single Crabtree & Evelyn store in the UK as well as their website.

Both money and fame, that sounded exciting, so I entered a little crochet square.



After a thank you email everything went quiet and the deadline for notifying winners passed by.  So I thought ah well, that's that then.

Then, who'd have thought it, I made a winner.  I was one of the 50 winning entries, my name is on their website, my name!  Then I received this letter today.



Let's take a closer look at some of those winning entries, can you guess which one is mine?



It's the Framed Flower Square, that pops up in all three pictures.  Here are some close-ups.




I can't take all the credit though, the pattern comes from Melody Griffiths book, 201 Crochet, Blocks, Projects and Ideas and was crocheted in Stylecraft Special DK (Saffron, Pomegranate and Meadow), using a 3.75ml hook.

I shall be whizzing down to my local Crabtree & Evelyn store to spend my winnings and am very much looking forward to seeing the completed Mother's Day Patchwork design on February 29th.
Nellie P