Freyja journey: More charts

April 29, 2015April 28, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 1 Comment

How’s it going? I am here today with another update of this Freyja journey. Remember Laura from Made in Oxford is also blogging about her Freyja so make sure to check it out.

Since my last post I have been working slowly away with the charts on the pattern. It requires all my attention, I don’t even put music on to avoid mistakes. I am definitely getting more used to the rhythm and since I will have to repeat each chart more than 20 times I know it will get easier. Patience is required and I am giving all I have 🙂

I am loving to see how it is taking shape, it is such a smart pattern. You know when you are working on a pattern and you see all these crazy charts or instructions and you really can’t tell how it will translate into your project? I was definitely on that stage a week ago, I couldn’t see the end game but now it is all fitting into place and it is looking amazing.

Isn’t it unbelievable how some designers can come up with such gorgeous creations? Their talent will never cease to amaze me, how they can take individual stitches and play with them in such intricate ways to turn them into a beautiful piece of art.

I will continue to share short posts with my progress but probably less often since it will take some time to get through these charts and it is just more of the same.

Thank you again for reading and keeping us company in this Freyja journey.

Sol

Love your blog challenge: Gratitude

April 27, 2015April 26, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 2 Comments

Hello everyone, hope you had a nice weekend wherever you are. I am here with the last prompt for the Love Your Blog Challenge by A Playful Day and this time it is all about gratitude.

Life can get so busy sometimes that we often don’t take the time to be thankful for what life has given to us. I am very guilty of this, especially since I am more of a glass half-empty kind of girl. As part of my goals for the year the first one was: Appreciate the wonderful things in my life more often and write them down at least once a month. I am so embarrassed to say I have only done this once but I guess it is never too late to pick it up so without further ado, here are a few things I am grateful for right now:

The arrival of spring: longer days and colour.
A good cup of tea: especially after a long day.
Free yoga videos: I can’t believe I managed without them until now.
People who love yarn as much as I do: the only ones with whom you can be your true self without odd looks.
My yarn and my hook: for the lovely time we have spent together.
This blog and you guys: for every view and comment.

Finally, I just want to thank Kate from A Playful Day and everyone who took part of the Love Your Blog Challenge, it has been so fun to take part and to discover some new blogs, I would definitely agree now that the blog is not dead: it is alive and kicking and we are not going anywhere.

Have a great week everyone,

Sol

Freyja journey: Charts

April 22, 2015April 21, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 8 Comments

If you have been following the Freyja journey you will know that it has taken a long time to get that first row finished. After many (too many) stitch markers and many hours of sitting down in concentration it is finally done! And I was only off a couple of stitches in the end so nothing that couldn’t be easily fixed (or hidden).

By the time you are done with that first row you need to make sure that you ended up with the almost 500 stitches stated in the pattern, which wasn’t easy to count. My advise is to count every 50 stitches and place a marker, that way when you lose your count you just have to begin again from the last marker and not from the beginning.

After an easy row of dc the dreaded charts have begun. There are three charts in total and you alternate them through the pattern until you have run out of those 500 stitches. It will make you laugh a bit when I tell you it took me a couple of hours to get through the first 20 stitches…! Only a few hundred to go… I don’t even want to do the math, I just know it will take a while and that is even considering I should go faster once I’ve repeated the charts a few times. But as I said in my last post, patience is a virtue and this shawl is in no rush at the moment.

If you know the pattern you may have seen there is a new stitch called “cnupps” which some people are a bit afraid of before starting the pattern. The designer has a really good video explaining everything and I have had no issues with them. I do think that the fabric around the little clusters is not very nice since it has to stretch to give them space, but hopefully once blocked all will be good. In case you are following the pattern, in the first chart there are some numbers on the top and bottom, there is no explanation for them in the pattern but they are only the number of vertical bars before and after the cnupps so that you can keep track of your loops.

You can see the results of the first chart in the pictures with the little cnupps coming off the surface, I really like them even if they take a bit of time. Like many other things in life it requires time and gentleness, concentration and precision. This is not an easy pattern but is has been very satisfying indeed, hope I remember this and not only that it took forever to finish!

Sol

Love your blog challenge: Ugly

April 20, 2015April 19, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 6 Comments

I am here again with the third prompt for the Love Your Blog Challenge by A Playful Day, this week it has taken a slightly different turn with the word: ugly.

As people say, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and you could say it is the same with ugliness. But I think there are a few ugly things happening in the crafty world which are not subjective and which we shouldn’t forget. Hard work is often unappreciated, designers are not being paid enough for their creations, and a low appreciation of handmade things in general makes people who are trying to make a living out of their craft really struggle to get by.

I purchased this beautiful cupcake pin cushion at a local craft fair this last weekend. It is so pretty and pink I just had to have it. Can you believe this was being sold for £1.50? That is even less than a coffee in Starbucks! When I mentioned to the stall holder that she should really sell them for more she looked terribly embarrassed and uncomfortable. It is so sad that some people feel like selling their work for very low prices is the only way people will buy them.

So let’s all try a bit harder to support the amazing creative talent of crafters out there: go to your local craft fair, tell the stall holder if you love their work, invite your friends and tell them how amazing it is to own handmade things and keep on buying on sites like Etsy and Folksy. Hopefully together we can make sure that people like the woman selling that pin cushion feels that her work is appreciated enough to sell it at the right price.

Sol

Love your blog challenge: Beginnings

April 13, 2015April 12, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 9 Comments

I am back today with my post for the next prompt for the Love your Blog Challenge organised by A Playful Day (if you missed the first prompt you can check my last post here). If you are a blogger I would really encourage you to check out the posts that Kate has developed to support the challenge, they feature some amazing bloggers and really great tips to help keep your blogging mojo.

First of all I want to thank everyone who left a comment on my last post about interactions and community, it was really nice to get your feedback and views on this topic and I really appreciate the encouragement you have given me as well. It has been so fun to read other people’s posts and I am very happy to be contributing to our awesome community.

I have been so inspired by readers and bloggers and what really made my week was to see Sarah from Crafts from the Cwtch change her “knit-along” to a “make-along” to include both knitters and crocheters! That really made my heart leap several times *sigh*

This week it is all about beginnings. And unlike last week’s post which was a bit of a struggle to get done, I couldn’t wait to get started with this one after such encouragement. I decided to give my blog a bit of a new leaf to honour this theme, with a new look, a new domain and also a new section. You can now find my blog at acrochetjourney.com, any of the links to the wordpress.com site will still work with this new domain.

If you look at the menu on the top you will see my usual pages for tutorials and free patterns, but you will now also see a new one under the name “handmade wardrobe”. I realised while thinking about beginnings that I really wanted to start exploring this theme more, first with crochet but eventually with other crafts such as sewing and knitting.

After realising that I was spending hours and hours working on projects that I never used I have been putting a lot more thought and attention to each of my projects to make sure that it will be something that I will love to wear once finished. One thing this challenge has made me realise is that I really want to inspire people to give crochet a try and wouldn’t it be great if I could inspire some of my readers so that we are all making lovely garments or accessories that we not only love to make, but also love to wear. There is something so special about handmade items, and clothes really strike a cord with my practical self. You always have to wear clothes don’t you? Well… not always but now we are getting off track!

The new section will contain all my posts from here onwards which relate to creating your own wardrobe pieces, from inspiration and patterns that I would love to try to WIPs and FOs that are being added to my wardrobe. I will do an introductory post soon and start creating content for this new section. Of course this is still a crochet blog so it will centre on crocheted items but with a bit of inspiration from other crafts as well.

So there you have it, my beginning in a new journey… a handmade journey. Hope you continue to join me and thanks for reading 🙂

Sol

Freyja journey: Getting through Row 1

April 8, 2015April 7, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 3 Comments

I love short weeks, it is so amazing that it is Wednesday already! Wednesdays will be the day when Laura from Made in Oxford and I have planned to keep you updated on our progress on the Freyja shawl by Aoibhe Ni, you can check the first post here where I talked a bit about the pattern and the yarn I am using.

I am halfway through Row 1 of the pattern after working on it over the long weekend. As I have mentioned before, Aoibhe Ni uses a special construction in some of her designs that takes some time to get used to. You basically start with a VERY long chain (we are talking hundreds here) after which you work perpendicular rows and attach the end of each row to the initial chain until you run out of chains. Since the foundation chain consisted of hundreds of chains, that means hundreds of rows that need to be worked up and it takes a while… I am a bit past the middle of the first row and can’t wait to see the end of it!

It is looking quite nice already though, and this yarn.. I LOVE IT. It is Rooster Delightful Lace and it is SO soft and creates such a nice fabric that I think this is going to be shawl that will be around my neck quite a lot once it is finished.

In case anyone of you is working on Freyja or thinking about trying it in the future I thought I should give you some tips from my experience with this pattern so far:

I don’t usually swatch for shawls but when I started working on this pattern I wished I had because I realised after a few perpendicular rows that I didn’t really like how the fabric looked. Tunisian crochet with lace-weight yarn can look too loose for me sometimes which I think makes the stitches look uneven. I ended up starting again with a smaller hook size and I am really liking the way the stitches look now.

The pattern says to begin with a long foundation chain, however I chose to work foundation double crochets instead. There is a tutorial for this stitch in my Tutorials page if you are not familiar with this stitch. I think it gives it a nicer and sturdier edge than if I were just doing a chain.

There are many lines to the instructions of Row 1 and the only way I could keep track of where I was in the pattern was to use one stitch marker per line, which is a lot of stitch markers! I am actually running out and will have to turn to using safety pins but it is the only way I will ever find a mistake if necessary.

With this method of construction there is always the chance that you will work through the lines of instruction in Row 1 and realise that you still have more lines to work but have run out of chains in your foundation or the other way around. I already know I am off by one or two chains if my counting is right and as long it is not much more than that I am not even going to try and find what I did wrong. You can always work two perpendicular rows into just one chain, or even skip the last one and no one will know 🙂

That is all I can share so far with this shawl, hopefully by this time next week I will have survived this first row and will be tackling another challenge. I have to say it feels great to work a difficult pattern again, I hadn’t done this in a while and I am really enjoying the satisfaction I get from every milestone I achieve. I am always looking for simplicity when designing patterns, mostly because of my inexperience in design but I truly hope one day I can create a challenge as beautiful as this pattern.

Hope you have a nice end of the week!

Sol

Love your blog challenge: Interactions and community

April 6, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 23 Comments

Hello everyone, hope you had a lovely Easter weekend. Mine is still going actually since I don’t go back to work until tomorrow thankfully. It has been a weekend of relaxing, crochet, sun and a lot of cleaning and organising around the flat. I had a long list of things I wanted to do this weekend and one of them was to join the “Love your blog challenge” organised by A Playful Day.

I have been thinking lately that I need to have a serious think about what I want for this space since it is time to define it a bit better. I started this blog as a personal challenge but I think it has evolved a lot since then and I really need to find a purpose for it to keep me motivated. I thought this challenge would be a good way to start: the idea is to get inspired with your blog again by writing a post around a topic each week, and the first one is “Interactions and community”. Once you post it you can share it with others doing the same and see what everyone else is doing.

As preparation for this post I have been brainstorming in my little notebook and I wrote down (mostly) questions, such as:

What inspires me about this community?
How do I take part?
What makes us a community?
Knitting community versus crochet community?
How and what do I want this blog to contribute to this community?

After this I was blank for days. It is crazy that when you actually have the time to be inspired and creative nothing actually comes to you, but when you are very busy doing other things then everything starts flowing again. After chewing these questions and concepts over for a while I kept coming back to the same idea: sharing. All our interactions, our community and even our inspiration are based on the basic act of sharing between us.

We share our love for what we do, our love of sheep, yarn, patterns and everything in between. We share our frustrations and our achievements, we share our knowledge regardless of its size or limits. We share compliments and advice, tools and colours. We love to share and we also love to receive it.

And we share all of this to anyone else who understands how much a skein of yarn or a project can bright up your day, we don’t need to know more. There are no skills or tests required to be part of this community, it doesn’t matter what you do for a living, where you live or how long you have been crocheting, knitting, weaving or whatever fibre craft you do. You just need to want to take part.

I have spent much time lately thinking about the boundaries of the fibre community to try to understand how crocheters like me fit in a community that is knitting-centered and I still don’t have the answer for it. I have said before that sometimes it feels like unless you knit you won’t really be part of it. That unless I actually grab a pair of needles I will continue to listen to podcasts with many things I don’t understand and I will continue to realise how the options available to take part in this community reduce significantly when you don’t knit, festivals and workshops being an example of this (and knitting groups the exception). I know I am a part of the fibre community, but it does feel like I am on the outside looking in sometimes.

What I realised though is that at the core we are a community of people who love to share, that is what makes it so amazing, inspiring and open. No one has ever not shared advice, excitement, compliments or anything else with me because I am a crocheter, and nor have I not shared with someone because they knit. In a world where everything is a commodity, fibre people are walking to a different tune by simply sharing out of love. Even those who are trying to make profit out of their craft are sharing their skills and talent from the heart. In that sense, there is not a crochet and a knitting community but a sharing fibre community filled with amazing people who share their passion for yarn in all its states and forms, and our amazement at what it can turn into regardless of the tools we use. It doesn’t answer my question, but it definitely helps. It also explains why even though I don’t knit I still enjoy all those knitting podcasts 🙂

I can also say for sure that I want my blog to contribute to this sharing community. Most of all, I want to share with the world the amazing things that crochet can do, and that it can be as fashionable and stylish as knitting. And if time allows, I want to continue to design patterns that push those boundaries a bit and make people want to learn what you can do with hook and yarn. Just like everyone else in this community I want to share what I love with everyone willing to listen.

I leave you with a picture that I think really says something about our interactions as a community. This is my fridge and the postcard you can see at the bottom is one I just received from a fellow crocheter who was on holiday in Spain. We met on Ravelry a few weeks ago and she kindly offered to send me one while she was away. I think I should probably correct my earlier statement: we are a community who loves to share, and to bring happiness to others. It’s the little things people, the little things.

Sol

PS Thanks Laura! 🙂

Freyja journey: Yarn and pattern intro

April 1, 2015March 31, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 3 Comments

A new journey begins! Laura from Made in Oxford and I are going to be sharing our journey while we both work on the Freyja shawl by Aoibhe Ni. Everyone is invited to join us or to follow our progress through both our blogs, starting today with yarn choices and and introduction to the pattern and designer.

De Dannan © www.halfadreamaway.com — De Dannan
© http://www.halfadreamaway.com

I wrote a post a while ago about Aoibhe Ni’s designs, her tunisian shawls are stunningly beautiful and I have already done three of them: Pax, De Dannan and Phoenix (in that order). She creates patterns so that you can use a normal crochet hook instead of a long tunisian hook and she has a unique way of writing her patterns and charts that I have not seen done by any other designer. Her construction is also quite unique and very different from the way I design my own tunisian patterns.

Phoenix © www.halfadreamaway.com — Phoenix
© http://www.halfadreamaway.com

Even though I adore her patterns I am not that crazy about her charts and I do remember struggling with them quite a lot for Pax, which is the first pattern I tried since it is a free download on Ravelry. If you are thinking of working her designs I would actually advice not to work Pax first… in my opinion it was the hardest of the three I have tried. If I were to do it again I would work Phoenix first, then De Dannan and finally Pax. This is mostly because Pax has some quite confusing short rows that when worked in lace can drive you a bit crazy. I am afraid all my shawls were given away as presents for family members so don’t have any pictures but I really loved how they turned out, especially Phoenix, that one is my favourite so far.

So you may wonder why keep working on patterns if they sound that difficult? Well, they are really not that difficult once you get used to the charts (Phoenix was actually a breeze) and the finished object is so stunning that you forget how long you stared at that chart because at the end it was all so worth it.

I am not sure why but I believe crocheters don’t challenge themselves as much as knitters do. This is of course an absurd generalisation but all knitters I know are usually trying techniques like cables, short rows, steeking, lace, difficult cast ons, provisional cast ons and so much more. Now, I don’t knit so I can’t say I know what any of these things mean but I do know that they are considered difficult by knitters and that to me they look crazy difficult. When it comes to crocheters somehow I get the feeling we are not as brave, we stick to our double crochet and trebles, our granny squares and easy projects. I may be completely wrong but when I look at what is popular in Ravelry I don’t see many challenging techniques in the patterns that are “hot right now”. If you are trying to get out of your comfort zone and want to invest love and effort in creating something beautiful, I truly recommend tunisian crochet (check my Free Patterns page for a few of my own designs in this technique) and Aoibhe Ni’s designs. The amount of projects done with her patterns is proof that we can ALL work tunisian, we just need to give it a try!

Ok, so a bit more about the pattern. Freyja is a pattern classified as advanced in difficulty so it is definitely not one to try if you haven’t worked any Aoibhe Ni pattern before. Even if you know tunisian crochet her way of working it (and writing it in the pattern) is very unique so I would try something a bit easier first. It is worked sideways so it starts with a VERY long chain and then each row is worked perpendicular to this attached to each chain. We believe this first part will be quite a big challenge to get through, we will let you know how it goes!

About the yarn, I had picked Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace, even had it winded but I changed my mind over the weekend since this lace is very thin and not very bouncy. I believe this shawl would look better with something with a bit more air in it so I chose this Rooster Delightful Lace I purchased at the EYF, it is a blend of merino and silk and I think it will be perfect. The colour is called Machu Pichu and it is this really nice champagne colour which looks a bit pink depending on the light.

So all ready to go! Laura and I have our hooks ready and we will be back soon with an update on our progress 🙂

Sol

March WIPs and FOs

March 29, 2015March 27, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 6 Comments

March is almost gone so I thought it might be a good time to give you an update on what I am working on at the moment and what I plan to start soon as well. First, my Lopi shawl is finished and I love it so much! This pattern is the Warm Winter Shawl by Patrick Hassel-Zein and it is not the best pattern out there, not many explanations and I never understood what the designer did for the edging so just did my own thing, but if you are comfortable with tunisian crochet you can figure it out quickly from the pictures.

The best part about this shawl is that I am wearing it! I wear it at home mostly but have also ventured out with it so I am really excited 🙂 You may be wondering what happened after my blocking panic which I shared a few posts ago… well, it did smell horribly of conditioner once it dried so I had to ventilate it for a few days to make it go away but it is fine now. It is not extremely soft, but still wearable around the neck for me even though I mostly wear it as a shawl around my shoulders. It should also soften with use and washing so it can only get better now 🙂

After the EYF I started working on the Alyssium cardigan by Joanne Scrace, which I actually tried on at the Crochet Project stall, very exciting! It is coming along nicely and so far the pattern has been very easy to follow, I am using the exact same yarn as the sample which is Eden Cottage Yarns Pendle 4ply, a lovely hand dyed merino yarn in the colour Dusk. This cardigan fits so nicely with my new aspiration of a handmade wardrobe, I am sure that once finished it will get loads of use, can’t wait to wear it.

At the EYF I mostly bought yarn for garments that I have had my eye on for a long time, so hopefully I will slowly start building a collection of handmade clothes and accessories that I love to wear. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I am even considering to take some sewing classes to broaden my skills to create my own clothes (and project bags!) but I am not sure if it would be very wise considering the little time I have available at the moment. I will let you know what happens…

Finally, I have been experimenting with tunisian crochet in the round, this is my first attempt at this technique and of course I couldn’t just do something simple… I had to do a stitch pattern that changes colour not only for the forward pass but also for the return pass. It is not bad, but I am not sure I could make a pattern for this since even though it is simple, it is very difficult to explain in a written form. I can of course just make it for myself but I feel like if I design something I should be sharing it, not sure where this comes from but it is how I feel.

I am struggling with that a lot lately, since I can’t just post a pattern for you guys and hope you will figure it out, that is not how I like to do things. I want to make sure that you can follow it and that you can easily refer to a good tutorial (mine or someone else’s) if you get stuck.

I am having that problem with my Moroccan bag pattern at the moment since I feel like I should explain how tapestry crochet works and do a tutorial for the bag but that will delay the pattern quite a lot and it takes such a long time to shoot pictures for tutorials. This perfectionism with my patterns is what is making me design less and less since I just can’t find the time anymore, but we will see, maybe I just need to post less patterns and dedicate the time I need to get them the way I like it, no matter how long it takes me to finally get the instructions here. Do you mind waiting? I would really like your opinion on this so let me know what you think.

Those are my current projects, I will be adding one this week since Laura from Made in Oxford and I will be working on the Freyja shawl together, I am very excited to have a crochet partner for a pattern like this, I have a feeling I might get stuck on a few things but I am sure the finished product will be worth all the effort and having company will make it all much more enjoyable. I am still deciding on yarn so will share that with you once I make up my mind (so many choices!).

Hope you are having a great weekend, looking forward to a short week and some extra hooking time during Easter 🙂 Take care!

Sol

Some Podcast (Lounge) love

March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ Leave a comment

Hello everyone, I am writing a quick post today since I have been the most ungrateful and forgetful person this week and I couldn’t let it pass. After I wrote my first EYF post I realised I had forgotten to mention the Podcast Lounge as one of the highlights of the show but intended to correct it with a special mention on my second post. Of course, I forgot again! This is completely due to my stupid brain and not anything to do with the Podcast Lounge not being a memorable and amazing space during the festival. And to make me feel even worse I actually won two skeins of beautiful hand dyed British yarn from the raffle! Thank you so much to the Podcast Lounge for my lovely prize and to Jess for saving it for me 🙂

So to make amends I have decided to share quick post about my experience in the Podcast Lounge and use this opportunity to show some podcast love as well by sharing the links to the great podcasts that I have been following lately.

In case you don’t follow many podcasts, the Podcast Lounge was organised by the amazing Louise from the Knit British podcast as a place to hang around and to meet some of your favourite podcast people. There were even little events organised for this space such as Q&As with designers or podcasters. The Podcast Lounge was my resting and crocheting space during the whole festival, every time I got tired or needed to assess my shopping, or to eat my cake for lunch I would pop over to the comfy sofas arranged for the occasion. Luckily for me, I always found a space and many times also familiar faces. I got to touch samples from lovely British yarn that Louise had knitted up and was amazed at how I liked them all! It was really an amazing space and Louise’s laugh on the background was just so contagious as well (you must listen to her podcast if you don’t already). I didn’t manage the courage to go and speak to her (I am silly like that sometimes) and thank her for being my commuting companion for so many months now, even though it is a knitting podcast and no crochet in it I enjoy it so much and it always puts a smile on my face 🙂

Sadly, I never managed to be there when one of the events were on, I think I got some times confused as well since I was sure there was something on at the time I showed up on Saturday, but it was still such a joyful place to hang around.

Finally I just wanted to share some of the great podcasts I have been listening to in case you are looking to try some out. I have a mixture of both video and audio podcasts though the audio ones are my favourites since I can listen to them while I commute.

Creative Yarn Entrepeneur show