Don’t come all clever dick with me. What’s going on? July 10, 2011

Week 11 and the row count is 280.  Not terribly impressive.  I am dragging my heels the closer I get to the end as I suspect I may feel a little bereft when this project is finally finished.

I have also started a side-project to practise my cross-stitching in preparation for the embellishments and this distracted me for a couple of nights.  I have cross-stitched on and off since I was 12 but I am acutely conscious that I only get one shot on the blanket. Unpicking mistakes will be a nightmare on crochet so a refresher seemed like a good idea.  There’s too little done to make it worth sharing at the moment but I will in the future.

The blanket is now so long that getting it all into one photo is becoming quite hard.  You will have to excuse the slightly odd angle on the picture.

The light is coming on a treat though.

This week’s quote is Ace’s reaction to entering the 7th Doctor’s TARDIS for the first time.  I know I am in a minority but 7 is one of my all-time favourite Doctors. I feel he is undervalued so I thought it was time we had some serious 7 love on this blog.

The curse of the UFOs July 27, 2010

I have been invaded by UFOs for the last couple of months.  I bounce happily along with a project for a few weeks, suffer crochet fatigue, abandon it and merrily start a new one.  But the UnFinished Objects call me, begging me to come back and finish them, to ignore the siren song of that lovely new cardigan pattern but I have got awfully good at ignoring their pleas recently.   Months later I come across a folorn UFO squashed up in a bag and either grit my teeth and finish the damn thing or start unravelling it in horror.   This is a very long way of justifying why I haven’t posted anything here since May. I just haven’t been inspired enough to finish anything exciting – including the shrug I was writing about in my last post.  Oh dear.

To prove I haven’t been totally idle, however, I have taken some photos of two things I actually finished and a work in progress which is about to take on a new form.

Two quick projects which did manage to hold my fickle attention were the Doctor Who filet crochet charts generously put on the web by Meredee on Live Journal.  I had never done any big pieces of filet crochet before and the TARDIS is frankly wonky

but I was very pleased with K9.  I think I had really got the hang of it by then. (Which is more than can be said for my photography skills.  I really should get Mr Crochethook to take the pictures for me.  His hands don’t shake.)

I found filet crochet quite relaxing once I got into the rhythm of the open and closed meshes.  I am not sure I would have the patience to do it in lace weight yarn though.  Double Knit was fiddly enough.

And now, may I introduce the amazing morphing project.  It began as a blanket of granny hexagons but is shortly to be ripped apart and rearranged as a cushion cover…  When I get the time…  If I don’t see something I think might be more fun to make first… OK, that’s what I think I am going to do with it.  Pretty though, isn’ it?

See?  Not totally idle.

Short and Sweet. March 15, 2010

There has been a severe lack of posting due to a number of ripped projects recently.  Sometimes you just have to admit defeat when a project just isn’t working out right and roll the wool back up again.  I am hoping that I have broken the spell now with Knitted Character mark III.  (I really have to stop offering to make these for people.)  This time he took no thought at all so it was a nice easy bit of crocheting.  I am planning a Peter the Duck to go with him which should make for another quick and fun project to keep me going.

I have also been playing with my new DSi XL – not sure how the picture quality works out but, damn it, I have lost my proper camera charger again so it will have to suffice for now.

Family of the Yarn February 1, 2010

Making Mr Banana on Saturday has sparked a touch of amigurumi fever in me.  (That and the fact that I am suffering from granny square fatigue for the minute.)  Yesterday afternoon I had one of my rare flashes of inspiration and realised that the Scarecrows from the Doctor Who eps Human Nature / Family of the Blood were made to be crocheted. I made him up free-hand but if anyone reads this and wants a pattern, I’m sure I can note one down.  Let me know in the comments.

And he has the Doctor's watch.

Right, I’m off to see if I can whip up a Weeping Angel.

Oh, My Poor Heartses! January 10, 2010

I was going to hang back from posting too much geeky crochet at first but pressure from other members of the household has dictated that the second project I share with the public is even geekier than The Knitted Character.

Prepare yourselves for a sad tale.  As a young boy, Mr Crochethook became a devotee of the comic 2000AD, a love which continues to this day.  In one of his mother’s magazines was an advert for a pattern to sew a Gronk and he pestered his Mum into sending off  so he too could have a Gronk of his own in case of unforseen medical emergencies.  Sadly the Gronk was never actually made and so Mr Crochethook was forced to live a Gronkless existence.  As a soft-hearted girlfriend, I had managed to get hold of the pattern a few years ago but sewing is not one my skills so I had to abandon the idea of making one for Mr Crochethook’s Christmas present.  As a new crocheter, however, I got uppish last year and decided that maybe I should have a stab at hooking one instead.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Gronk, he is a strange looking fellow and opinion seems to be divided on even the basic facts.  Even now I’m not sure what colour he really is.  I found a few images on the web but ended working mostly from the ones on this page and with the colours I had to hand.

Presenting the Gronk

He was a very early project and has a lot of faults – mostly concentrated on his strangely shaped posterior!  I didn’t have a pattern and basically made him up as I went along.  That’s beginner’s bravado for you though and the strangeness of the creature doesn’t help.  He did, however, satisfy Mr Crochethook’s thwarted childhood longings.

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I mentioned yesterday that I was stash-busting as it is the only New Year’s resolution I am ever likely to keep.  Here is a small part of the yarn collection I need to tame.

Never leave me unattended in the wool shop.

I always seem to over estimate how much yarn I will need for any given project.  Add this to an inclination to buy just one more ball to be on the safe side and you end up with a slow invasion of the flat by plastic bags bulging with yarn.  As you can see, I am not a yarn snob – the whole pile is 98% acrylic but I love the colours so see no reason to feel ashamed of using the stuff.  To get it all under control I am creating a full-on retro granny square throw for the sofa. As the picture above shows, it is an ugly, ugly sofa so covering it up is all to the good.  I love a good granny square as it makes for nice mindless crochet while reading or watching the TV with no real need to look at what your hands are doing.  Due to the snow I have made great progress over the last few days and hopefully it won’t be too many weeks before I can post the final result.

New Year, New Blog January 9, 2010

Have started 2010 by deciding to finally blog about my growing crochet mania.  That and starting on some serious stash-busting but that is a whole post in itself.   I started crocheting just over two years ago, having given up all hope of ever mastering the strange and mysterious art of knitting.  I started with Stitch ‘n’ Bitch Crochet – The Happy Hooker and just got it.  In one afternoon I could crochet which was a revelation and has proved to be a delight.  I rarely move now without hooks and yarn.  I crochet while on the bus, while reading, while watching TV – unless Doctor Who is on.  I have to give that my undivided attention.

I plan to use this blog as a place to display the fruits of my labour.  As I have a couple of year’s worth of stuff to blog about, I imagine the posts will come thick and fast at first.  It all might slow down a bit once I am down to works in progress.  Anyway, to start off I am posting the project I am proudest of to date – a “Knitted Character” from Harry Hill’s TV Burp created at first for my brother and then again for a friend who really wanted one.   The Knitted Character is sadly misnamed as he is clearly crocheted but who am I to argue with Mr Hill’s comedic genius?  I used a monkey pattern from Mr Funky’s Super Crochet Wonderful and added a small circle of crochet for the muzzle. The ears I just made up as I went along.

Version one took me a weekend to produce and I didn’t do a great job on the mouth but my brother loves him.

Version One: Great ears, not so good on the facial embroidery

Version two was much quicker and I finished him in few hours.  He had a better mouth but I was less happy with the ears.  Aural deformity aside, he was warmly received in his new home by which point I was so sick of the pattern I never did make one for myself.

Version Two: Bad ears