Week Off Work Week 2: Day 2

Week Off Work Week 2 has been pretty busy so far. OH and I have visited 2 housing developments and ruled one out with the jury out on the other. I’ve cleared out and reorganised a closet and taken huge quantities of stuff to storage. All of my and OH’s bank accounts are now registered for online banking, even the one that required setting a passcode, registration number, memorable picture, memorable date and not one, not two, but three security questions and answers (!!).

Ooof. It’s been a busy few days so the crafty side of things has been on the back burner a bit. I’ve made a few more snowflakes for my snowflake blanket, but my big achievement is _finally_ blocking the remainder of the blocks for my Blue Block Blanket. They’ve been staring at me for weeks and I’ve just never got around to it, but it’s done now.

I do love how nice and square they are once they’re blocked.

Now they’re all packed in shoe box awaiting the fun that is me trying to sort out a layout…

The beginnings of a blanket

5 down, 54 to go…

Snowflake pattern adjustment

Both my test snowflake hexagon and first real one came out a bit ruffled round the edges. For such a little thing, it was driving me mad and I kept trying to smooth the ruffles out only for them to bounce back into place.

There’s _no_ way I could cope with a ruffly blanket as I would spend all the time trying to smooth it out and get grumpy when I couldn’t, so I decided to try tweaking the pattern a bit. I removed a tr from either side of the dtrs in round 6 then reduced the number of stitches on each side in the remaining rounds by 2.

Much better. Flat edges = no smoothing = happy me!

Definitely not…

A large squishy package may have arrived chez KT this week…

It’s totally not a joint order, by Anna and myself, for snowflake blanket yarn…

Definitely not…

121 blocks = done

I finished off  the last blocks for my blue block blanket last night.

It’s not going to be as big as I’d originally intended, but after more than a year of on/off Summer Garden Granny Squaring, I’ve reached the point where if I don’t finish then it’ll get parked and be a long term WIP. I did feel kinda sad working on the last ones, but better that than getting fed up and leaving them at the back of a cupboard somewhere.

So it’s on to blocking. Anna had a great suggestion of using a foam camping mat…

There are 46 blocks on there at the moment. I could have done more but I ran out of pins (and that’s after buying a pack of 200 specially for this!) Hopefully the blocking will be done by next weekend at which point I’ll lay them out and start sewing them together!

I really shouldn’t, but I probably will

I’ve gone and made a test snowflake hexagon and because that clearly isn’t enough, I made a puffy flower! It was just to try them out to see that they’re way too tricky and that I’d be daft to do either.

The snowflake pattern was pretty simple.

There was some head scratching and pouring over a crochet stitch reference what with it written in US stitches and me only having done trebles for the last year, but I got there in the end.

Unfortunately (for me) the puffy flower was also simple. Although it does require a magic loop which is a minor issue as me and magic loops are not the best of friends. However I got there, and there wasn’t even any swearing involved, so I consider that a success!

I do like how puffy it is!

So after all of that my willpower is crumbling. I know I should finish my blue block blanket first, but I really want to move onto snowflakes and puffy flowers!

Blankets on the brain

I’m going crochet blanket crazy and it’s not good. I have a bad feeling that if I don’t get it sorted, there’s going to be all sorts of yarn spendiness going on soon.The current state of my blanket craze is this:

1. I’m so loving this snowflake blanket that I posted about the other day.

It’s just gorgeous and I really, really, really want to make it. I was thinking maybe white snowflakes with a deep purple background? Although Anna pointed out that the royal blue in my blue block blanket has this lovely shimmer to it, so it would probably be lovely. Although I kinda fancy a change from blues after a year of blue granny squares. See I’m not even finished my blue block blanket and I’m already thinking snowflake colour schemes. Tis madness!

2. As if a snowflake blanket isn’t enough, I’m also loving this so much that I went and bought the pattern! I’ve never wanted anything enough before that I’ve bought the pattern, but I just love this. Isn’t it fab?!

I’d pinterested it ages ago but found out that the pattern’s just been released, so my willpower deserted me and the pattern was mine shortly after. Wouldn’t this be lovely in reds and pinks? Or red and aqua? Or red, orange and yellow?

It’s probably a mahoosive amount of work though. Perhaps a cushion might be more do-able. Or a coaster. A puffy flower coaster – that would be nice!

3. And then because I am clearly insane, I also want to make a granny stripe blanket like Anna’s.

We had a crafty club the other night and I got total blanket envy. I even went as far as online yarn window shopping before sanity prevailed. But I _need_ to make one of these. In red and pink. It has to be red and pink. I can just picture it.

I think I need help…

Final makes of 2011

Sneaking in before the end of 2011, I have some final makes!

First up, I made a rosary pouch, from this tutorial, for my MIL’s Christmas present to go with a couple of religiousy books from her wish list. It was super simple to put together so I’ll be filing this away as a great last minute gift

I also made it to 100 blue block blanket squares the other day!

It’s been nice and relaxing to sit on the sofa and watch the pile of in progress blocks build up.

Although I’m beginning to lose the love for these blocks. Two rounds of the colour scheme will give me 112, and I’m hoping that if I continue to 121 for an 11×11 blanket, that’ll be enough. Although with blocks this size, I suspect it won’t (but I’m trying very hard not to think about having to make another round!).

I think part of the reason I want to finish is I’ve got need-to-make-it-itis for this snowflake blanket I saw on Pinterest. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it and may have bought some shimmery silver yarn yesterday to try a test block…

Blanket mojo rediscovered!

It’s been a while since I did any work on my crocheted blanket. I’m not really sure why – it just fell by the wayside a bit. But yesterday, Anna and I had a morning trip to the Hobbycraft sale (sadly underwhelming) followed by an early lunch in Starbucks. Post lunch we dabbled in a bit of Crochet In Public, eek! My first time for this – Very Exciting!

Then this morning I woke up really excited to do more on my blanket. It’s been so long since I was that excited about anything crafty and it’s a fab feeling. So up I got and did all this before breakfast. And I do like my breakfast!

Tonight I’m off to Anna’s for a bit more blanket hooky. I’m up to 91 complete squares, so I’m thinking I might be able to get to 100 today!

WIP Wednesday: More blanket progress

Finally some more progress on my blue block blanket. I’m up to 80 blocks and have the centers made for several more…