Sunday 27 November 2016

Crochety!



The sun streaming through the windows encouraged me out into the garden to take some autumn photographs - clogged up with leaves as it is! Still a few summer herbs, and good old geranium. The bird house gets used as a perching post, but not for nesting, and the large bug hotel appears empty, but the one Jim made  has three or four residents I think.


     Hanging on to my parsley for grim death! Of course, when the frost hits, that will be it for the year.


           I'm hoping the chards - white and rainbow, will see us through winter, along with the kale.


                                Back of the cottage in the late afternoon autumn sunshine.



                                              Really pleased the bug house is being used!


                                                   And still the cranesbill survives!

I've really got back into crochet the last month or so; perhaps it's the weather! Lovely to cosy up with a basket of gorgeous wool and a crochet hook when the evenings are dark and the temperature drops. Colour-schemes buzzing round my head all the time.

I'm very excited that my wool has arrived for Lucy's (Attic 24)  latest  "Moorland" blanket, though it has to sit on the back burner until January when she begins the Crochet Along pattern on her blog. I haven't even opened the bag in case I'm tempted to dive in and use the wool!

I do have a fair amount of Stylecraft yarn which I've just boosted with a small delivery, in order to begin my own latest blanket which I am calling "OCEAN". I'm using the Lucy pattern from her Cosy Stripe Blanket, but have come up with my own colour scheme. A little like her Moorland idea, I used the natural colours of an outdoors scene. I wanted to depict the colours from the grassy dunes, down to the beach, and into the ocean. I haven't used a photograph, and my colours repeat as a block rather than as Lucy has done hers following the vertical striations of the photograph. (If that sounds skew-iff,  I mean the striations are horizontal in a vertical context.) I think that's what I mean anyway.


This is my "Cosy Stripe" blanket, using Lucy's pattern and colour scheme. This is our favourite of all the Lucy blankets I've made. It works up very quickly and soothingly.


OK so this is MY colour scheme for "OCEAN" It begins with four shades of green, depicting the grassy dunes, the sea-buckthorn, samphire and other seashore grasses. Then comes the dry sand at the top of the beach, followed by the damper sand closer to the sea. Then comes the almost white surf, and four more shades of blue as the water gets deeper and further away from the shore.  This 'colour repeat' is only 22 rows whereas Lucy's moorland depicts the entire vertical slice of her photograph, and is one single scheme with no repeat. (although colours are repeated obviously).


Here I'm just beginning the first repeat. I love all these shades, so am excited afresh each time I change colour! "OCEAN" is intended as a gift for someone special, but no more about that just yet.


As a break from the blanket I'm using up all those little balls of left-overs to make solid granny squares. NO IDEA what I'm going to do with them, but they are building up nicely into a little pile; I'll just keep going with them until I have sufficient to do something with.


Each little ball makes roughly four or five squares. More left-overs will accrue, so obviously this is an on-going project.


                   More greens required - and some shades of red too, I think. Time will tell.

Rummaging through the sewing room, I found a basket of multicoloured granny squares which I began years and years ago - I'd forgotten all about them. They are a pretty disparate crowd, but I have thoughts about adding a couple of rows and pulling them together with one or two colours, so they will blend more easily. Again, no real idea of the outcome, but there will be enough of them for a throw.


The light in my sewing room wasn't the best when I took this shot; the squares are much brighter than they appear here. And of course, greens never seem to come out properly on the blog, for some reason!

No other stitchery going on at the moment, I am obsessing about crochet - and you know me - one obsession at a time! But of course I am cooking and reading, and even doing a little gentle walking! Yes! Me! I hope you are all finding something  lovely to obsess about and are enjoying yourselves.

EDIT :  APOLOGY!!!!  Whilst publishing the comments for the previous post, I inadvertently clicked on the "DELETE" instead of "PUBLISH" but I cannot for the life of me remember whose comment it was. Please, if you commented and haven't seen it posted, let me know - I never delete a comment and would hate someone to think I have whisked their kind comment away without publishing it!

10 comments:

  1. Loving your ocean throw, and the colours are just right the way you describe them, ascribe them to grasses, surf, sea deepening to the horizon etc. Looking forward to the finished project. And I am using oddments of Stykecraft to crochet dpsquares, but solid, not holey as the usual granny square so it's a bit more substantial. Haven't decided about Lucy's CAL, not one for doing things others are doing too! I see from your FB page that you too, have an able kitchen assistant. Is he good at clearing up after you as well? Mine is, a real treasure.

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  2. Hi Edwina - well….. not so much the clearing up, but certainly the washing up!
    My left-overs are the solid square (again one of Lucy's patterns,) not the usual holey granny.I think when I have sufficient squares I might make a totally random patchwork throw… who knows! Lx

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  3. Hello Lynne, I am delighted to see that you are posting again. I'm the one that is getting behind now. We have both gone through a time with the flu, just to get well in time for a week long visit from our daughter and granddaughters. They flew out on Thanksgiving Day and that afternoon we were guests at Steve's brother's, followed my visits back at our house with his nephew and wife. It's been a busy two weeks and no time to blog :)
    I love the color scheme in your "OCEAN" work; the colors are so well blended and they exude tranquility at it's best. It will be a restful and treasured gift to whomever the fortunate person receiving it is. Today is Sunday and maybe not a day for work, but we will be wrapping our pipes, because our weather is forecasting a cold drop in temperatures. We dealt with frozen pipes last year and do not want to repeat that again.
    Have fun is your crocheting obsession, you do it so well :)

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    1. Hello my friend! How lovely you had the family for Thanksgiving, I hope it was a lovely time for you all - and glad you are over the flu I am having my annual debate with myself whether to have the flu jab.

      Yes, I'm pleased with the colours and think it will work well especially as the throw gets longer. I think it will benefit from a good border of say, two or three blues, just to emphasise the 'blueness' as the greens are appearing to dominate at the moment.
      We have 'future proofed' the cottage, new lighting, new central heating, so I hope we'll be OK this winter. NO trip to NEw Zealand this winter so we will be here for whatever the weather throws at us! Stay warm! xxx

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  4. 'One obsession at a time' - me, too! Loving the gradations of colour in your Ocean blanket, Lynne :) x

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    1. Hi Jayne - thanks for popping by. Yes, I'm hoping this obsession will last long enough to finish OCEAN in good time… before I need to get on to the next 'thing'. The curse of ADD, but also two faced because while the obsession is current I can achieve a lot! ;) Lxx

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  5. Lovely colours and patterns, not sure if I could make a blanket other than in squares! Thanks for the reminder about plants. I have cut back all the parsley plants you brought me and doug one up to bring indoors for winter.

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    1. Dc the rows are FABULOUS for relaxing into! Really soothing, you just crochet along to your heart's content! I find squares … well, I have to be in the mood for them with all the changing of colure each row. Which is why the solid squares are a gift for me to do! Yes, I should bring some parley in shouldn't I? I'm SO hoping my little poppies survive into next year, and hope they eventually spread.xx

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  6. Loving the colors in all your crochets...the colors are lovely! Here in SE Kansas I had my yellow roses doing yet another bloom about 2 weeks ago. Now everything is gone as we have had a couple of early freezes.

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    1. Weird isn;t it! My fuchsia has bloomed 3 times I can't believe it, and the roses have only just gone over. But we are only just getting into really cold weather, nothing severe as yet (fingers crossed!) xxx

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