African flowers for a cushion cover

Hip hip hooray! My first attempt at African flowers and i'M A-LUVVIN THESE!
If you like them too, I found the pattern over on FLICKR in the african flower crochet group.
They have the pattern in words as well as a diagram. Have a go, these are fun!

And you have 5 rows of colours to play with. I have crocheted them together on the fifth row.

It's a wedding present for my sister who is getting married for the second time and who has requested only handmade creative presents..... And their campervan ( new) is a deep red, hence the choice of colours.

Something to make it look cosy and to rest a weary well-travelled head on....

14 colours from my stash and some I bought specially: mostly DK cottons, some bamboo, all different brands: Patons, Wendy, Rowan,King Cole,Elle,Sirdar and so on.

3 greens, 3 reds, 2 orange tones, 1 peach, 3 pinks,2 beiges. Some to brightly clash a bit. Fun.

At forst I thought it wasn't so portable, but then I thought why not crochet the first 4 rows ''on the go'' ( train journeys, hockey matches, waiting in line at Mme Tussauds.....) and then do the joining row at home?!! So that's what happened above, both made in London on 2 August.

same 2 with a flash, colours don't look so good now?Another 16-18 to go I reckon!

That's the perfick ( a la Larkin) project for our little holiday starting tomorrow! A great adventure on the canals: our first mission in travelling by narrowboat.......!!!!!! Will I have time to crochet? Or will it all be ''all hands on deck'' for all those locks, 36 I believe.

Susan's Sardinia interpretation

Here it is then, a cotton top inspired by the pattern called Sardinia in the Rowan Summer Crochet book, but although I like the stitch and the way it's loose, the drape and so on, I don't like it on me. Mega dissappointed. It's too big and unflattering.

I thought using the pattern sideways would make it more slimming and the steeper neckline would be more flattering to my curvy self, but it hasn't worked out that way.

Could be that I used a thicker yarn? Dk instead of 4 ply?

I do like the shoulder yokes I created. I made it out of 6 panels you see, a back, 2 shoulder yokes, a centre front panel and 2 front-side panels.... All in different directions. The shoulder ones run horizontally, like the centre front. Trim borders of dc(USA sc) also please me, as do the neat side slits and the crab st( USA reverse sc) edges.

Front.

And back.

What shall I do? Give it away? Who would like to have it? Any takers, please?

Or dye it a deep blue and wear it with white top and trousers?

Or frog it and make something else, then dye it? Though I knida like the colour, I'm not sure lilac, even such a nice deep blue-y shade is quite my thing?

It weighs 434 g or 15 oz approx, size probably a 16 or 18 UK size as I'm a 12/14 and it's a bit roomy on me.

63 cm across the shoulders, inc the cap sleeve, 57 cm across the back at bust height and 57-59 cm across hem including the trim on the side-slits.

Back length 56 cm from centre back to hem. Centre front panel is 18 cm by 40 cm.

And on a cheerier note: my first African flower sample, worked from pattern directions found on the AFRICAN FLOWER group on FLICKR. It's such fun to do I'm going to make my sister her wedding present using this very motif but in different colours.

Old book, memories and MODERN designs to crochet and wear

This is IT, a lovely lovely book I discovered at a yarn shop in Bovey Tracey, Devon when we were there in the half term holiday. It was a shop copy and very old but I found it on Amazon!
It has the most terrific memories for me as it features many crochet patterns which I have seen before in a Dutch needlecraft magazine called ARIADNE to which I subscribed in the mid 1970's and all through the 1980's. My sister even had it sent to Canada for me when I lived there in the 1984/1985.

This is my all time favourite and I simply MUST try to make it , maybe in a turquoise or blue colour? It's in a wool but the pattern does not state an aran thickness. The crochet cabling is stunning.

A zigzag relief design.

More creamy snowy wooliness in crochet cables.

Terrific lattice, great for cycling on my orange bike too!

Very unusual but intriguing stitch this, still all crochet!

Fabulous patterning in mohairs too. Another fave, a must make, as soon as I have sourced the right mohairs
Boucle too.Summer jumpers in cotton for children and adults alike.

This was just a taste, there's 60 patterns in the book and I can't wait to start trying them out.

Phoenix Trail sunny cycling

Yippeeee THIS is just about my MOST favourite colour and shade and tone of BLUE!
Makes my heart go skippety skip, whoopee! Time to dance, to sing, to frolick in the fresh air.

Cup of tea in the sun in the garden and my logbooks and journal/diaries and some heavenly daydreaming as it's 2 weeks to my BIG/HUGE/ENORMOUS birthday ! The hugely eventful one, a real landmark this one. Pff I've been alternatelyy dreading it, making plans, dreaming and then again panicking over it . But hey NO, i'M GOING TO BE EXCITED, I'M really happy to have lived so many decades 14 days from now, there's sooooo much I've learned and experienced and so much that doesn't worry me or bother me anymore that life will be more free and more fun and more ''connected'' and more, well just MORE of EVERYTHING good.

Lovely snake-head frittillaries in a pot.

Purple everywhere in the garden just now.

re-worked the SARDINIA stitch sample in Patons DK cotton and a 4mm hook. In purple of course!

Weirdly, in sunshine the sample matched the flower on the right exactly but on the photo it does not.

Miss Y and I went cycling today, on the Phoenix Trail. Miss E cou;d not/ would not come as '' she had nothing to wear''.( stated whilst sitting in a ''carpet'' of clothes ankle deep)
AAAh the angst of an almost teenager......

So off we went on this idyllic sunny day. Miss Y is way ahead, can you see her?

Here she comes.

Whizzing on by.

Time for a wee rest break. Lovely sculptures on posts, we've always called them the 3 rabbits but we then discussed what else they could really be? That BLUE, though, THAT blue is divine!

Bikes at rest too. Much further on: a field of rapeseed not yet in flower.

We went further and faster than Miss Y had ever been, all the way to Horsenden tennis club in fact, approximately 7.5 miles we estimate. One way. There were also these AMAZING fields of a green, soooo GREEN that they almost glowed with the verdant new growth greeness of it all. EMERALD.

We saw many birds and heard them too and there were many butterflies: Red Admiral and little yellow ones and even a ''crows village'' in that there were 12 or more crows nests all grouped together.

Come on mum!

BRAVO little one YOU have cycled about 15 miles today: WELL DONE and CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! from a very very verrryyyy PROUD mum.

Here it is again: that GREEN. Glowing glorious green.

Home again and the yarn from Inside Crochet arrived at long last, only almost a month late and of course AFTER I have cancelled the project? Why is that? Nice though! Might be tempted to try to do it after all?

This was the original design. A little summer ''smock'' top for either of the girls.

I have now had 2 days away from my EBC cupcake project in that I have continued to crochet bases and tops but have not done any embroidery and it is this which takes me so very long.

Had a lovely time on Ravelry on the rainy Wednesday : tracing Katia Bombay- it's in 190 projects, and also Sardinia has already been made by 2 ladies, one in black. Corsica too has already been made by a lady who made it in red. And 13 or more people have made ''Rona'' from the July 2009 Rowan #46 , which I'm thinking of making from my stash or Rowan wool and tweeds in reds and purples. That stash dates for the early 1980's when I bought for over £100- which was a huge amount in those days- enough Rowan wool to knit a cardigan in fairisle and intarsia involving large floral motifs and a border in wools,tweed,kidsilk mohair and chenilles.

My tension was too tight and the yarns got knotted and muddled and I only managed about 20 cm from the hem up.

So yesterday I also tried out a NEW STITCH not just a stitch pattern but actually a whole NEW STITCH. This is SHALLOW Double Crochet. It's in Inside Crochet and on a website: www.melissah.com . It's a very short stitch, shorter than a dc and makes a very firm fabric.

In the orange sample above I have tried a 4mm , a 5mm and a 5,5 mm hook with a DK cotton.

Only the 5.5mm was getting towards a drape- quality fabric.

I found some other stitches to try while on YOUTUBE but more of that another day.

Front and back are almost identical with this stitch.

See you soon and HAPPY HOOKING!