The Girl that Stitches

Cosy Stripe Blanket My Cosy Stripe Blanket is almost halfway with 43 stripes (86 rows) completed.  I've had golden thread sitting in my stash for quite some time and decided to crochet it into one of the stripes.  I'm hoping there will be enough leftover to do another golden stripe later on too!  I've also got some metallic bronze to introduce into the colour palette as well!  Matisse and I snuggling up and crocheting the golden thread into the latest stripe: It's been really fun using so many different colours.  I do have a plan I'm working off... but I've also spontaneously changed things as I go along, so the colour order hasn't been completely set in stone.   The pattern is from Lucy at Attic 24 Previous progress at 18 stripes: WIP, 22 stripes: WIP, 27 stripes: WIP, 30 stripes: WIP, working on stripe 34: Stripes 34 to 43 close up: Current progress, 43 stripes/86 rows: Happy Stitching! xxx

Challenge #4 I've finished the Challenge!  Here it is: Previous progress: Challenge finish: Cosy Stripe Blanket My Cosy Blanket has gained more stripes but not as many as a Zebra!!! ;)  It's currently sitting on 18 different coloured stripes, with 36 rows complete.  I think it will need about 90 different coloured stripes, or about 180 rows all up... So I'll keep stitching lol!...  The colour scheme should begin to make more sense once colours start to tie back and repeat.  There won't be too many repeats though as I've got quite a few different yarns to use!  I'm loving the texture of the contrasting rows.  The pattern is from Attic 24 . Previous progress: WIP: Current progress: Happy Stitching! xxx

Rug Progress  The t-shirt rug is now finished! Here are some work in progress photos from where the last blog left off: Previous progress; 20 rounds, about 80cm wide: After 31 rounds; about 127cm wide: After 32 rounds; about 130 cm wide The Finished Rug The completed rug ended up having 35 rounds and measuring 144 cm wide!  It’s also quite heavy!  Which is not surprising since there has got to be at least 50 or so whole t-shirts of varying sizes in there.  I did end up needing more green t-shirts for the last couple of bands as I decided to go back to green before ending on black.  There were some t-shirts left over but I did use most of the yarn I had.   The great thing about the rug is it is hand washable.  I've found it’s better to spot wash if possible because it’s really thick which means it takes ages to dry. Underlay I purchased a non-slip rug grip underlay for underneath.  Although the rug so heavy that it doesn’t tend to...

A Circular Rug I've been busily making my t-shirt rug project and can now reveal the first part of the rug!  If you have been following along with previous blogs, it will now make sense as to why I was madly cutting up so many t-shirts!  After weeks of collecting, washing and cutting shirts it was super exciting to finally get stitching!      A rough template of the colour band order followed is pictured below, traveling from right to left with some lines of yarn doing more than one band.  The estimated gauge from my test swatches was about 2 cm per round.  The plan was for the finished rug to be between 120 to 150cm wide, a size that would work well for the room it would live in.  For the rug to be halfway between this range it would need approximately 33 rounds! (To estimate the number of rounds for a given size circular rug; find the radius and divide by the stitching gauge:  So for a rug diameter of 135cm, the radius= 135cm divided by...

Of Earth, Air, Water & Fire This week I finished the top page on the Phelan project.  The first column is now complete! Reminder of cropped version: Previous progress: Current progress: It's really tricky to capture the sparkle on camera.  It glitters more in person!  The metallic threads were not charted and have been added to the design.   Goals Update Now the Phelan pages are done I'm very very close to achieving my yearly goals!  There are still two pages left to finish for my 2016 goals.  The pages are almost there but both have a decent amount of confetti remaining, so fingers crossed they can be completed in time! Update on the T-shirt Yarn Project! After checking out how many t-shirts were used in similar projects,  I decided there was a need for more shirts!  The yarn pile has now multiplied from 29 to 51 balls! There are also some spare shirts to cut up if need be. The dark greens and blues are not displaying correctly... A...

The weather has been quite cold here, so before getting the knitting needles out this year I decided to try out crocheting for something new and different. I’ve only crocheted once before so it’s not something I’m very familiar with!  I wanted to make a beanie and cowl for a gift. I based both designs on a video tutorial for a scarf posted by SimplyHookedCrochet: Click here for the Sweetheart Scarf link I kind of only followed the stitch and did a lots of improvising because I needed to make a matching beanie as well! What I came up with is intentionally different to the video! I based the beanie on the same stitch so it would match the cowl.  I added a rim on the for contrast and length (because whoops it wouldn't have been deep enough otherwise)!!!  With the cowl I decided to crochet the stitch so it ran the width rather than the length of the scarf/cowl. Beanie Cowl Please excuse the contrasting colours in the cowl pictures! The actual colo...