Event Plaid

This is my latest project - and it's almost finished! It's called an "Event" Plaid because the plaid is created by a special date.

I first saw this idea on this lovely blog, This Life. She lives in the US and she first saw the idea on this post at Laughing Purple Goldfish, which is a blog in Melbourne. So back to Oz I went to see that one, too. (Laughing Purple Goldfish is a great blog, by the way, full of interesting ideas, tips and patterns. I thoroughly recommend it!)

Anyway, please follow the links above to their posts on Event Plaid blankets, because they explain the whole idea very well. But I'm about to try and explain it as well. Okay, here goes:

First of all, you need a special event/occasion/anniversary, etc. My special occasion is my sister has bought her first home - this is a house-warming gift.

Next you need to decide on a date. My date is 24 June, 2010. It's the date that my sister moved into her new place.

Then you need to choose yarn and colours, and organise the colours according to the date. My yarn is Patons Smoothie DK, which I showed you in this post. I chose 5 colours and they match the date like this:

twenty- (2 rows dark red/claret)
fourth (4 rows teal)
of
June (6 rows pink)
2 thousand (2 rows yellow)
and ten (10 rows blue)

See what I mean? (Again, check those other blogs - they explain it better!)

So that also decides the order of your stripes. EXCEPT... I didn't like that colour-order :-P so I kept the numbers but re-arranged the stripes. So, I've kinda messed with the whole idea there... oh, well, it's still the concept behind the whole creation.

So THEN you start to crochet. You crochet rows following that stripe pattern and the number of rows so it corresponds to the date.

The basic crochet stitch pattern is this: double crochet, chain one, skip next stitch (which is a chain-stitch), double crochet in the next double crochet. This creates a kind of mesh effect, like a net, with lots of holes:

dc (UK treble), ch1, dc, ch1...
6 rows pink, 2 rows yellow, ten rows blue... etc

Does that make sense?

It ends up looking like this:


THEN once that part is done, you do something a little different and it's really kinda groovy - you WEAVE. You weave over, under, over, under, all the way along the vertical, so the weaving is 90 degrees to the crochet stripes. Again you follow the stripe pattern so the same colour order and number of rows is followed. You usually need two or three strands to "fill" the weaving spaces well.

And this makes a plaid effect!

See what I mean? Cool, hey?

I have actually done heaps more weaving than this now - I'm about three quarters of the way through it - but I haven't taken any more photos!

A couple of things to mention, though. This project gets very boring at times. The crochet part seems to take forever. And it doesn't look very special or interesting at that point. I am so glad both the blogs mentioned above talked about this in their posts, because if they had not, I may have given up. But they both assured me it was worth continuing on with it.

And then the weaving feels like it takes ages, too. And I found it quite tricky and fiddly. First I tried it with a weaving hook that my daughter has from a craft set but it was too short and awkward. Then I tried with a sewing needle, but that made the yarn strands twist over each other. In the end I switched back to a crochet hook, and that worked quite well. As I went on it got easier.

I used two strands for the weaving, as I found that easier to weave - I measured the lengths I needed (which were about 3 times the length - this allows for the fringe as well) and then I doubled it over and pulled it through with the hook.

I am almost finished the weaving, and it looks really cool once the weaving is there.

Well, I hope that all made sense. I'm off to work on this again, and hopefully in a few days I will have a wonderful, big TA-DAH! to show you all. :-)

Til then,
Have a happy, hooky day,
Caz :)

Yarn, Glorious Yarn!

I ordered this wonderful bundle of yarn online a few months ago. It is Paton's Smoothie - an acrylic, DK/8ply weight yarn that has a wonderful, silky feel to it. I absolutely love it so I was surprised to hear that it has been discontinued. Seems a shame, but the upside is that I could get it online for a great price! :-)

This yarn is for yet another project to add to my collection - and, yes, it's for yet another blanket! But this one is for a special ocassion, and that gives me the motivation to get on with it and get it DONE - all the way to the end - ASAP.

Well, things are crazy-busy here as usual, so I must dash, but I'll share more about this project soon as it has gone really well, and is - indeed - almost FINSIHED!!

Have a happy, hooky day,
Caz :)

P.S. I haven't forgotten about sharing my crochet top with you - the one that I wrote about here - but it's rather a long story and the post I've started writing is becoming quite complicated! I do tend to ramble... and over-think things! :-D but I will keep working at it, try and simplify what I've written and upload a post about it all soon. :-)

More about the Local Show

At the end of June, our region had its annual local show. The show, as I mentioned in this post, is a bit like a local town fair: it showcases all the best the town has to offer: best cattle, best horses, best wood-chopping, best arts and crafts, best produce. And, of course, there's side-show alley, with its rides, dodgem cars, fun houses, laughing clowns, games of chance, and the quintessential ferris wheel. When you live in a small country community, with not much to do, it's always great fun to go along to the show.

These pics were taken from up atop said ferris wheel. As you can see, being a country show, it's a fairly small affair, and beyond the show grounds is a whole lot of ... well... nothing! Countryside, sugar cane fields, and - just out of shot of the photos - the small town of Proserpine.

In this photo (below), in the top left corner, you can see a building with a green roof. This building held the produce, cooking, school, photography, and art and craft displays.



Including...

the crochet blankets...

...all FIVE of them! (Told you it was a small show!)

See my Rainsong Blanket there? On the bottom shelf? :-) Nice! I feel like one-of-the-gang! :-)

I feel I must comment, though, to the way our work was displayed in comparison with other crafts, particularly the quilts. Now, no offence intended to all the quilters out there - it is a difficult and admirable craft, I'm sure. But the quilts are hung, on rods, up high, while the crochet blankets were left scrunched in a corner!

Okay, maybe they weren't scrunched, but you can see for yourselves how they were displayed:

And you can see, in the background of the photo above, the back of one of the quilts, hanging up as I've described. I wish I'd taken more photos of the quilts to help explain this more, but basically they were hanging up all around the pavilion.

Here is the winning "blankets and lap-rugs" crochet entry. It's made of those repeated motifs that are meant to look like a 3D cube. I like that 3D illusion stuff. There's a free pattern for a similar one here. I think this blanket would have looked a lot more 3D if it had been given a better display.

Does quilting really deserve more display space and admiration? Is it true that people see crochet as "the poor-man's craft", so lowly and easy that it only deserves a little corner? I'm just curious on your thoughts here. I think for the work involved in our blankets, they could have been displayed a little more generously.

But, regardless of how they were shown, it was nice to see my first-ever-completed blanket there, amongst them. I felt really chuffed. :-)

Oh, and here is a close-up of second prize. Very nice stitch-work:


Who knows, maybe I'll have some luck next year. I've already got some projects in mind! :-)

Well, I hope you've enjoyed your journey though our local, country show. It's only small, but it's always a lot of fun, and it feels good to be a part of it!

Till next time,
Caz :)

Rainsong Blanket - the stats

Finally, here are the details of my first-ever-completed blanket:

Name: Oliver's Rainsong Blanket

Pattern: Rock-a-bye Rainsong

Pattern source: "Best Crochet Afghans" by Leisure Arts
Hook size: 5mm
Yarn: Paton's Washed Haze Aran (10 ply/aran/worsted weight - I think?) in Steel, Dark Blue, and Mid Blue
Amount of yarn: 10 balls each of Dark Blue and Mid Blue, 11 balls of Steel (approx*)
That's 31 x 50 gram balls = 1550 grams (1.55 kg)
Dimensions: 92 cm x 181 cm
Number of stripes/rows: 76 stripes (152 rows)
Number of stitches: approx 21,000!
Date commenced: 29 December, 2009
Date completed: 21 June, 2010
My reflection: An easy pattern to follow and not difficult to do. The long double-crochet stitch makes things a bit more interesting. It did get boring at times, but I love the way it looks with the colours blending into each other; it was definitely worth all the effort in the end.

No luck at the annual local show, by the way. But that's okay - I wasn't really expecting anything (and the other entries were pretty good :-) ). It was just nice to see my work out on display.

And I love the fact that my son uses it on his bed every day, and when he feels sick or tired he drags it into the lounge room and curls up under it. That is far more important and endorsement enough for me! :-)

'til next time,
Caz :)

* My 10 lots of 3 would have been enough except... I went and made something else with the yarn when I was half-way through the blanket, didn't I? Did you see the slippers in an earlier post - the blue granny-square slippers? I made them for my Dad and used quite a bit of the "steel" shade. I now know that this was a VERY silly thing to do! I realised a couple of weeks ago that I was going to run out of that shade first and I ended up having to order 2 extra balls of that shade. So I'm afraid I can't tell you accurately how much yarn I have used! :-P

P.S. May I just add that it's lovely to finally find time to blog again? The past six weeks have been super-crazy at our place, with many visitors passing through, including a 1-year-old who was here for a few weeks. He kept us very busy and turned our lives upside down! I hope you haven't forgotten me and that someone is actually reading this! :-P I've missed blogging on here and chatting with you all and it feels so great to be back! :-)

See you soon.

Rainsong Blanket - ALL FINISHED!!

It's FINISHED! It's finished! It's finished! (said while dancing around the room)

My first-ever, actually-completed, crochet blanket is finished.

Such a wonderful feeling - so satisfying. I just love, love, love looking at it, wrapping it around myself, enjoying how soft it feels and how finished it looks! :-)

I ended up doing the edges in rounds of single crochet. I liked the way this was a very simple stitch, and different to the main part of the blanket. I think a plain edging is good because it doesn't distract from the main stitch pattern - instead it just holds it all together and makes it look finished.

Did I mention that it's finished? ;-) And that I'm pleased about this? :-D

Let me share a few more photos with you:

I am so pleased with it, pleased as punch. :-)

And then this crazy idea came to me: I should enter it in the local show!

Now, thinking internationally here, I'm not certain every country follows this great Aussie (and British, I assume) tradition of the Local Show. In the US they might call it a "State Fair"(?). In Australia it's also known as an Exhibition, and the Brisbane Exhibition is known as "The Ekka" - following the Aussie style of shortening long words.

Anyway, for those who don't know: a Local Show is an annual event/festival. It's a fair with side-show alley - all the rides and games - but the show is also a chance to "show" our local best. There are horse riding competitions, wood-chopping competitions, and there are entries that are displayed and judged. Prizes are given for: the best cattle, the best chooks (chickens), the best sugar cane, etc, etc. And there's also the best cakes, the best home-grown vegetables, the best flowers, the best paintings... and the best crafts: knitting, quilting, and... crochet!

And our show is THIS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY!

I finished my blanket on the weekend - just in time to enter it. I don't have hopes of winning best blanket or anything like that - I just love the idea of seeing my work on display. Up there for all to see. Finished. I would feel mighty proud - and pleased as punch - all over again. :-)

So I will make sure to take photos at the show on Friday and share them with you as soon as I can.

Wish me luck!

Til next time,
Caz :)

P.S. Here's the link to my local show's website: Show Whitsunday. I live in a small, rural community, so it's all very small-time, but it's all in good fun. :-)