As my mum feels the cold quite easily, this year for my Mother’s Day, I decided that I would make my mum a crochet throw blanket! I had seen the Nature’s Neutral Crochet Throw in a Better Homes and Garden (Australia) magazine that would be perfect for her, as she loves neutral colours, particularly shades of brown.
They sell kits for this throw blanket, which include the pattern and yarn in either acrylic or wool, and you can opt for a fringing pack if you wish. I decided on the on the wool throw with fringing, and purchased the kit from the BHG Shop.
Written in UK English, the pattern is easy to follow, though it did take me quite a lot longer than the advertised 12 hours. I think that I may be a slow crocheter though – based by other’s videos that I’ve seen online who seem to be able to crochet at record speeds! 🙂
The kits contain three colours, and they are worked in a gradient from dark to light, as you can see in the pictures, but for the instructions you will need to purchase the kit! The wool is amazingly soft to the touch, and as I was working it up it kept me delightfully warm! Sometimes I can find wool a bit scratchy, but not the case with this lot!
This throw is perfect for Winter here in Australia, and was an enjoyable make! You can purchase the crochet kit here, and if you are a knitter, or prefer a brighter colour mix, you can also purchase other combinations through the BHG Shop.
As I mentioned back on my Amigurumi Turtle post, I’ve been crocheting since February last year, and the very first technique that I learnt was the traditional granny square. I decided that I should make myself a blanket, and thought that I could finish it by winter, no problem! Heh, I think I may have underestimated the task!
My wonderful friend, Maxine, was extremely patient and taught me the basics of how to crochet a granny square, and then to make it all sink in once I got home, I watched (and re-watched quite a few times) Bella Coco’s video tutorial. I refer back to her written instructions whenever I need a refresher and find them very easy to follow. I’ve learnt to crochet in UK English terms, which are slightly different to the US English crochet terms, but I’ve also managed to learn how to translate between the two!
As I do, I got very excited after finding out I could crochet a granny square, and went straight onto Pinterest and found this amazing blanket that was pinned! (The website the pin links to no longer seems to work, but the picture is there.) It was perfect, combining my loves of quilting and crochet, and it had quite the modern look to it too!
Unfortunately there was no pattern, but I used it as inspiration to start designing my own pattern for a “Crochet Quilt”. Living in Australia, we don’t have as many yarn brand options, but I kept reading about how soft (and affordable) the Stylecraft Special DK yarn was, so I chose my colours from the amazing colour range on LoveCrochet and saved colour swatches for each of the colours. I am a little obsessed with purple, but decided to balance it out with some pinks, turquoise and greys, resulting in these beautiful colours (although the bright pink, Fiesta, is displaying as much brighter than it seems in real life):
From L to R, Top to bottom: Aspen, Petrol, Fiesta, Grey, Plum, Magenta, Fondant and Silver
I decided that while I could colour in a piece of paper, I wanted to be able to use the colour swatches to get a much better idea of how it would all look once I pulled it all together. After much investigation, I purchased the Quiltography iPad app, which was fantastic to use, and imported my colour swatches and started playing with layout. This is what I came up with:
If you live in Australia, you’ll most likely have noticed that we’ve already passed one winter and we’re about to hit another, and I’m only a little over a third of the way through my crochet quilt! I started working on it last May but since it’s a project for myself I keep putting it off to one side so that I can get other projects with tighter deadlines, like birthdays, finished.
Each square is five rounds in size, and on a good night I can get one square done in about 45 minutes, so I’m normally able to do one after dinner, or sometimes on the bus (if I’m not working on another project). I thought that I’d post some progress shots on here so that I have a bit more accountability, and hopefully I’ll get it done this year, so feel free to comment away and ask how I’m going with it! This is where I’m at now, but I’ll keep on working at it…
I’ve committed the cardinal crochet sin of not sewing in my ends as I go, and I still need to attach the squares, but I think it’s coming together quite well!
Recently it was my friend Alicia’s birthday, and she absolutely loves turtles, so I set out to hunt through Pinterest to see what sort of turtle patterns I could find.
I stumbled upon a few crocheted turtle amigurumi that were really cute, but there was one in particular that kept catching my eye. I Pinned a few, planning on revisiting them the next day, but next thing I knew, Alicia had liked them – Whoops! Turns out that I hadn’t added them to the secret board as planned, but at least I had the reassurance that she’d like it!
The image in this pin was just too cute to resist, so I clicked through and purchased the pattern from LuvlyGurumi’s Etsy shop.
I’ve been crocheting for just over a year, and this is my second amigurumi that I’ve attempted, but the pattern was very clearly written and easy to follow. It is written in US crochet terms, and I found a fantastic tutorial for Invisible Decrease in Amigurumi, a technique that I needed for this project but I’ll be using again in the future. The left-handed version can also be found on her YouTube channel.
This cute little turtle even comes out of its shell, and while I have changed up the colours a little, I am very happy with how it turned out.
This turtle was very well received by the birthday girl, who luckily hadn’t paid attention to whose pin she was liking, so it was still a surprise!
Perhaps my little turtle will inspire you to make your own, I know I look forward to purchasing some more of LuvlyGurumi’s patterns!
