A Week of Hearts: Thursday

A Week of Hearts: Wednesday

A Week of Hearts: Tuesday

A Week of Hearts: Monday

I'll be posting a different heart picture every day between now and Valentine's Day. This is Monday's photo.

A Rose and Some Stripes

I'm finding myself gravitating towards anything to do with yarn these days. The knitted rose is from Nicky Epstein's Knitted Flowers, although mine doesn't look quite the same as the one in the book.
I used RYC Cashsoft 4 ply and small needles, and I think this makes a nice fine-scale finished piece.

The finished look of this rose depends a lot on how you roll up the knitting to make the rose. It can be a tight or a loose roll. It seems to be a matter of finding the balance between evenly rolling and leaving room for the top edge to curl. It all depends on how you want it to look. I fiddled about with it for quite a while and I'm quite pleasedwith the finished effect.

If it's not knitting, it's crochet.

This is what became of the pile of yarn I bought 3 months ago with a striped blanket in mind, and it has indeed become stripes.

I wanted to keep the design simple and let the colours speak for themselves. It's aran weight, which is thicker than my last blanket. It's mainly rows of half-trebles, but to vary things slightly I did the pale blue rows in trebles (I'm using UK crochet terms here).

It's almost finished now. I just want to work some sort of edging around, so I'll see how that works out.

This has been so therapeutic to do, I could hardly put it down. Just one stripe after another, stacking up colours.

And at the end of a week of real winter weather, this is my snowy garden.

I must admit I do quite like the snow, at least I do when I don't have to go anywhere in it.

I like the stillness of the undisturbed garden, and the reflected whiteness brings a lovely quality of light into the house.

Birthday Pansies

Well, it seems I can't stay away from my blog for long! I wanted to take advantage of a sunny day and take some photos - we seem to have been living in a semi-permanent state of twilight here lately.

You've seen this doily pattern before, but now I've made one with pink pansies for my daughter, whose birthday was last week. She was apparently 25! Can that be right? Surely it was only the other day that I was 25 myself?

This is the third time I've made the pansy doily and I'm still not sick of it, LOL.

There are so many different colour schemes it can be done in.

The pansy pincushion is a few years old and is from an old Need'l Love pattern.

Edit: The doily pattern can be found here.

New Year, New Blanket

During the strange timewarp that is Christmas and New Year, I managed to get my blanket finished. I crocheted the squares together with dc (or sc if you're in the US). With this method of joining, the seam becomes part of the design.
I added a narrow stripe of green around the edge to add a bit of definition. I think I could have put fewer green stitches at the corners, but what the heck, it's done now.

Then I made miles of lacy edging and sewed it in place, gathering and easing it at the corners. If you're interested in the edging pattern, it's from Leisure Arts 2876, 99 Edgings. I used pattern no. 13 which I modified slightly. It was worked the short way and was quicker than you might think, as it's only a 2-row repeat which is easily memorised.

I wanted to use the yellow because I already had several balls of it. Would you believe the joining alone took almost a whole 100 gram ball of yarn!
The square motif is from 101 Granny Squares, published by Annie's Attic.

The whole thing is about 42 x 48 inches. The yarns are a mixture of different brands of standard dk weight, most of which I already had in my stash. The only thing I had to buy more of was the off-white.

I enjoyed making it and I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. To me it looks fresh, sunny and springlike.

I like the way that if you take elements from different sources and put them together in your own way, you can finish up with a unique, individual piece.

Well, after 2 years of blogging I think the time has come for a pause. If you have regularly read my blog, I want you to know how much I appreciate your interest in my creative efforts. I will be posting more occasionally in the future, but for now I wish you a very happy although belated New Year.

Knot Garden