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! 🙂

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

That is me for today, will be back soon!

Sol

EYF 2015 Part 2: My favourite buys

March 25, 2015March 24, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 4 Comments

Hello there! How’s spring/autumn treating you? Edinburgh has been a bit sunny lately and will get an hour more of light from Sunday after the clocks change. I never used to like summer and brightness like I do now, that is what happens when you move to Scotland!

I want to share my second post about the EYF 2015 with you, I was glad to see you enjoyed the first in which I shared my general experience in my first ever yarn festival. Of course I couldn’t possible share my experience without sharing some of my buys as well! Not all of them though, since that would be quite embarrassing… I must say I had been on a yarn diet for months (which I only broke to get the Lopi yarn for my shawl) and I have a project in mind for (almost) all of my purchases so it’s not THAT bad 😛

I love everything that I bought to be honest but I decided to choose the favourites among them, which was very hard indeed! Here they are:

1. The Shawl Project. This pattern book is not the first one by chance. It contains six shawl designs by Joanne Scrace as part of the Crochet Project venture and they are all oh-so-beautiful. The photography is amazing, there are great explanations and charts and even a guide to designing your own shawl patterns, since all the designs use a different construction technique explained by Joanne at the end of the booklet. And it even gets better: all the shawls use only one 100g skein of 4-ply. Seriously people, if you love crochet shawls, you MUST get this. They sold out of their first print run at the festival but another is due soon so keep an eye out on their Facebook page for news.

2. Naturally-dyed merino yarn by woollenflower. If you follow my blog you may know I have been interested in natural dyeing since hearing about it in a few podcasts that I follow. I am an environmental engineer and have always been attracted to techniques which value and protect what nature has to offer. So when I met Jules at her stand in EYF and realised that the skein I couldn’t stop staring at was naturally dyed I just HAD to get it. It is really the most beautiful colour I have seen on yarn before, and in my excitement (especially after she mentioned she will be doing workshops, yay!) of course I forgot to ask her what she used but I promise to find out and let you know. Jules had such lovely things in her stall, including some amazing project bags/pouches made from worn out Harris Tweed jackets and the most beautiful colourwork cowls she made in her knitting machine, how amazing is that? She has a website and an online shop so please go check her out, she not only does beautiful things but she is also one of the nicest people I have ever met.

3. Pendle 4ply by Eden Cottage Yarns. I am sure many of you have heard or bought yarn from Eden Cottage Yarns, they have some lovely bases and some hand dyed lines including this beautiful 4ply pure merino wool in the colour Dusk. The colour is truly beautiful and something that would fit nicely with the rest of my clothes. I bought it to work on the Alyssium cardigan by Joanne Scrace, it is the same yarn and colour she used for the sample, it looks so beautiful that just decided to get the exact same yarn. Already working on this and loving both yarn and pattern.

4. Brooks Blend by John Arbon Textiles. I had been wanting to try yarns from John Arbon for a long time now so I was very excited to check their stand at EYF and I really didn’t leave disappointed. They are based in Devon and many of their yarns use fibre from their own Exmoor Blueface sheep. I stopped at their stall so many times and purchased many things there but these skeins are my favourite from them. You can’t find this yarn online, it is a DK-weight blend designed by Emma Brooks, it is 50% Polwarth, 30% Alpaca and 20% Zwartbles and it is the softest thing EVER. The natural colour is just perfect so I had to get a few to work on this cardigan I saw on the last issue of Inside Crochet. If you are interested they are doing a mill open weekend in May so check the website for details.

5. Organic Wensleydale 3ply by Little Owl Crafts. This stand had beautiful organic and hand-spun yarn and these organic Wensleydale skeins caught my eye immediately. I am thinking stripes! They have a shop on Etsy if you want to check it out.

That is it for today everyone, the EYF will definitely be one of the highlights of 2015 for me and can’t wait for next year!

I will be back soon with some pictures of my finished Lopi shawl and my current projects 🙂

Have a great day!

Sol

EYF 2015: My first yarn festival experience Part 1

March 20, 2015March 19, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 13 Comments

Uffff… I have been thinking about how to write this post since there is so much to say. I have decided that it will have to be done in a couple of posts: one to share my general experience in the festival and another one with my favourite purchases (I can’t show them all since I am too embarrassed to confess all that I bought!).

Edinburgh Yarn Fest was one awesome weekend that more than exceeded my expectations. I really don’t know where to start and I am bit tired today so this post will be a bit all over the place but here are the highlights of the weekend:

The marketplace. OMG, I have never in my life seen so much beautiful yarn and yarn-related things in one place, it was all a bit overwhelming the first day but the second day I got to stop and truly admire the work of such talented people that put so much love and dedication to their products. I got to chat with quite a few and everyone was so nice and attentive. From yarn, to buttons, to fibre, to patterns and everything displayed in such beautiful and creative ways, it was very inspiring just to walk by those stalls. And the colour… such amazing colours everywhere made my heart sing 🙂

The Crochet Project stall: If you are a crocheter, and only a crocheter like myself who couldn’t knit if my life depended on it you will understand the joy of seeing a crochet stall in a yarn festival. And not any stall… a stall from the awesome Crochet Project run by two amazingly talented designers: Kat Goldin and Joanne Scrace. I have crocheted beautiful patterns by both of these ladies and have admired their designs, especially garments, for a long time. Very few people in the crochet world design patterns as stylish and wearable as these two designers so I was so star struck when I met them! Their stall was filled with gorgeous samples and patterns, crochet hooks, the cutest labels for your hand knits and their new pattern book “The Shawl Project”. More on this little book on my next post since it is definitely on the favourites list…!

The people. If you have any knitters or crocheter friends you must already know that yarny people are awesome. They are encouraging, passionate, friendly and they are the happiest when around loads of yarn and other yarny people who feel the same way about their crafts. So you can imagine what you get when you put hundreds of yarny people in one place surrounded by the most beautiful fibre-related products: a happy and oh-so inspiring atmosphere. Just to look at what everyone was wearing was like a runway show of beautiful hand knits made with love and care, it was such a treat. Whenever you got tired you could go sit down somewhere and take your WIP out or pet your new yarn, and then you would look around and see that everyone else around you was doing the same! I had been the lonely crocheter on the train for so many months since work didn’t allow me to go to my knitting group and then suddenly I was just one of the crowd, doing what we love to do, surrounded by people who love that as well. Sigh… I don’t know about you but a room full of knitters and yarn is exactly how I think heaven should look like.

My first crochet class. I booked one class for the festival, it was the only crochet class that wasn’t for beginners. It was about how to make crochet wearable by the amazing Joanne Scrace. As you may know I am diving into the world of crochet garments and have had a few ups and downs so this class seemed like a great way to help me in this new journey and I definitely didn’t leave disappointed. Joanne was a great teacher who not only explained techniques that can make crochet fabric more wearable but also why and how they achieve that effect and what is the whole science behind crochet fabric that makes it different from knitting. If you have the opportunity to take this class I truly recommend it, you can check Joanne’s website for more details.

The organisation. I had never been to a yarn festival but this was one well organised event. The only time I was in a big queue was before the start of the first day and only because many of us got there before the doors opened. Getting our ticket was breeze, there was a big lounge area to seat and eat with a great selection of music in the background and there were some really fun stuff like a free Photo Booth on Saturday.

As you can see it was one awesome weekend filled with colour and inspiration, it was so hard to get back to work the next day and realise that your everyday world doesn’t have yarn in it!

If you are thinking of attending any yarn festivals next year I would put the EYF in the list since it can only get better!

Will be back soon with my favourite purchases and my Cobbled Street pattern which is almost done 🙂 My tunisian crochet class is this weekend so have been very busy preparing for it, hopefully I will get some time to get pictures of my purchases and share that with you soon. I leave you with more pictures of the weekend for you.

Have a great weekend 🙂

Sol

A sense of ease

March 8, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 5 Comments

Hello there everyone, how was your weekend? Mine was a bit more social than usual which is always a good thing and today has gone just like every other Sunday, in a flash! Sundays are one of the hardest days of the week for me, not sure why but I always get quite anxious and struggle a lot between wanting to do nothing and wanting to be very productive and use my time wisely. Do you struggle with that as well?

Maybe it is just me feeling bad for not having accomplished something each day, and I think it has gotten worse with time. Anyway, my two accomplishments of the day today have been to get back on my hypothetical yoga mat again (I don’t have one yet so just use the carpet in the living room) and writing this blog post. If you remember my goals for this year you will know that giving yoga a try was one of them and I had been doing quite good until a couple of weeks when I started to feel a bit bad and couldn’t find the strength to do yoga after work.

However, I have been feeling better this week so there were no more excuses. I am still working the complete beginners workout by Yoga with Adrienne, it lasts 20 minutes and it has a few challenging parts for me but not too difficult so that I end up feeling like I didn’t really do anything properly. I always feel great after this practice, not only because I feel more relaxed but also because I actually found the motivation to do it, getting on the mat is actually the hardest part.

The instructor is great and she talks a lot about finding this “sense of ease” in each pose instead of looking for perfection. This has stuck with me since it is actually a great way to see life in general and not only yoga. My latest project has really been about finding that ease, something comfortable to put your effort and love into. Remember my obsession? Well… the shawl is almost done! One week and I am on the last stripe and then all that needs to be done is the border and blocking.

This Icelandic Lopi yarn is like nothing I had ever worked with and like nothing I ever thought I would like to work with as well. As yarn enthusiasts I think we are always looking for that soft and bouncy skein, and this is nothing like that but not short of amazing either. It feels rustic but so incredibly close to the sheep to which it once belonged to. It is incredible warm and once it blocks it will get softer and nicer to the touch.

While I as looking for more information about this yarn I came across a blogger who was talking about the little bits of vegetable matter that you can find in the yarn and how much she loved that she was actually holding a bit of Iceland in her hands brought to her by the sheep itself. That is a lovely way to put it.

Aside from my shawl there hasn’t been many more updates on the crochet front, my Doris Chan top is finished and in my closet where it will probably stay for a long time… but anyway, it was a nice project to work on. My Moroccan bag is close to being done and just in time for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival… can’t wait! Still working on my shopping list which is getting longer by the minute.

That is me for today, hope you all have a lovely week! I will be back soon with my Moroccan bag finished and of course my experience in my first ever yarn festival 🙂

Take care!

Sol

And here we go again

March 2, 2015March 2, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 4 Comments

“Like so much in life, the joy of knitting isn’t necessarily in the destination, but in the journey itself”

I am sitting on my couch after a long day, pondering about what project to tackle next. I am still reading the book with knitting stories and came across this quote that I couldn’t shake off. It feels like lately a lot of my crochet is about the journey and not the destination.

My Doris Chan top is blocking in front of my eyes as I write this (very… slowly…) and the more I look at it the more I realise that this top is not really… me. Don’t get me wrong, it is a nice top. I like the rolled edges in the neck and sleeves, I like the stitch pattern, and the colour, though a bit too pink, it is not a bad pink at all. But if I look at my closet right now I realise that this top is going to be one lonely garment amid clothes which are not in that style at all. Lately I am very into neutrals, into large and long sweaters that don’t hug my body. And this is definitely not that.

I have been crocheting for many years and I do enjoy a challenge. After focusing mainly on crocheting accessories I realised garments were the next step but it has been very difficult to find patterns that catch my eye. Because of this I think I have lowered my standards when it comes to finding patterns for garments and will settle on something that is well above the rest of what I have seen, but maybe not up to what I would like to make. I am not saying there are no good crochet patterns out there, just not many I would wear which is a very personal thing.

I do like the concept of a handmade wardrobe and I thought that is what I had been doing but now that I think about it there are very few things that I have crocheted that I actually wear. I don’t wear fingerless gloves but I continue to make them for some reason, even design them! I do wear my Uva shawl and my Cobbled Street cowl, but I think that is it.

So I have decided to really start thinking about what patterns to do/design and truly work towards my handmade wardrobe. We put so much time and effort into our crafts and even though I do not consider the time spent in my Doris Chan top a waste of time at all (it has made me realise I LOVE top-down construction), I do want an extra satisfaction with my crochet by making sure that the finish product fits my style and gets along with the rest of my clothes. This means no more projects using yarn from my stash that I know I don’t like anymore just for the sake of using it and no more settling with patterns that are not me. I just have to go figure out what is “me” now… 🙂

Have a great week everyone,

Sol

Healing

February 21, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 7 Comments

Hello everyone, I know I have been missing in action this week and have not posted much but I will not apologise this time because I really needed some time away. It all started last weekend with a headache that lasted for three days and continued on and off during the week, alongside with my stomach acting up and just feeling very tired. The cause of my headaches and stomach issues is 99% of the time due to anxiety and stress and I don’t think it was any differently this time, have been very busy at work with loads of deadlines and not a minute to take a breath so I guess it was bound to happen.

So I decided I needed a break from the blog and everything else that might get in the way of the healing process I knew I needed to start. No computer time at home unless I really wanted to check something out or reply to messages/comments, no pattern writing, early nights, yoga every day if I was feeling up for it and loads of happy crocheting without a deadline or worry.

I also went to the library and got some great yarn and crochet books to keep me relaxed and entertained. The book called “Knitting Yarns, Writers on Knitting” has been my go-to book before bedtime and has been a pleasure to get little knitting stories before bed, each one very different to the next but all sharing how knitting came into their lives and the significance of creating something with your hands. Ever since I started listening to Woolful I have been very intrigued about natural dyeing so got a few books on that as well. It is very interesting and would love to try it one day when I have a proper place to do it.

My crochet time has been divided between my Doris Chan top and my Moroccan tote. The top is coming along, maybe a bit smaller than I thought but I won’t really know how it will look until I finish and block it so we will see. I am working on both sleeves at the same time as recommended by the designer and it has been a great idea.

My Moroccan bag has been coming along as well, the crocheting is actually done! I LOVE the pattern and colours of this bag. I have to say it is a bit on the smaller side for a tote and this was intentional since I thought I was going to be so bored by the middle of this project but I do regret it now cause I would have liked to keep going. Not sure why I didn’t get bored of the same pattern the whole time but I really enjoyed crocheting it.

Yesterday I went to John Lewis and got some fabric to line it and I received my leather handles through the mail this week so all ready for the finishing (but oh so very important) details. I plan on cutting and pining today to start sewing on the train next week.

I have also been working on samples for my first ever tunisian crochet workshop! I am so excited to share this amazing technique at Ginger Twist Studio in March. The first workshop is fully booked but there is another date in May so if you are in the Edinburgh area and would like to learn tunisian crochet please visit Jess’s website for more details. I have been planning like crazy, I know you can’t plan every single minute for these things but can’t help it, I am working on samples and creating class handouts and I really can’t wait to share all my excitement.

And that is what I have been up to, posts may be less often next week as I get back to my blogging rhythm. I have patterns to write and tutorials to put together but first of all I need to feel well enough to do all those things so please bare with me, I am still here, still loving crochet and still wanting to share my patterns and projects with you lovely people.

Have a great weekend!

Sol

Swatch girl, swatch

February 11, 2015February 9, 2015 ~ solrencoret ~ 6 Comments

Swatches and I don’t really get along… yet. Every designer and experienced crocheter recommends you to swatch if you will be doing a garment and it makes a lot of sense. Even if you are off only one centimetre from the designer’s gauge this can mean a considerable amount once you multiply that to get the length or width of what you will be crocheting.

After the experience with my tunisian vest I shouldn’t believe in swatches at all but I know that was not my best effort so I have to give them another chance, I have to do it properly this time.

I have started a new crochet garment, this time the Kolika top by Doris Chan. I got this pattern as part of a video class where she explains the basics of top-down construction and gives detailed explanation of how to make this top. I really LOVED this class, I had never worked something top-down but it has quickly become a favourite. Doris Chan is also a great teacher, very clear, encouraging and thorough in her explanations, so if you have never worked this technique before I really recommend it.

I made a swatch for this, but this time I did it properly. Even though it is quite small I took my time to finish it, I probably picked it up around four times during different days just to reflect how our tension changes all the time. Then I did to it what I will do to the finished garment: I blocked it according to the finishing instructions and measured my gauge before and after.

Before blocking my gauge was 0.5″ smaller than the designer’s gauge, but once blocked my gauge was perfect in some rows or 1/8th of 1″ smaller in others. This was very helpful for when I had to choose the size, and keeping a record of my gauge before blocking has helped me track how I am doing as I work the pattern.

I am almost finished with the body and even though I can’t tell exactly how it will look once blocked yet (since it will grow quite a bit) I am definitely pleased with the results so far. Gauge swatches are not perfect and the garment may not end up being the exact size that I planned for but after this exercise I am expecting it to be quite close. We will soon find out…!

Sol

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