It’s time for my annual crochet binge! This year I’m feeling extra optimistic about it so I’ve got several crochet projects on the go. There’s the advent calendar that shall not be named. It may turn into a 2021 advent calendar. My nephew might still be a little too young (or at least that’s my excuse!)
I am working on another ambitious project for him though. It’s starting off with this pile of pima cotton I ordered it from Jimmy Beans Wool and they included a funny roll of knitting pattern toilet paper with it. LOL.
I’m turning the whole pile into a quiet book. My nephew loves books so this seemed like a good idea. I found a couple of cute patterns, one is ‘My Favorite Things’ and the other is a Weather Book. Favorite things include a tree, a bird, a boat, a balloon and the Weather book is a snowman and a rainbow, very cute. So cute, in fact, that I brushed aside the entire thought that crochet intarsia stinks just as much as knit intarsia.
I will prevail though. I’m determined and so far, despite the obvious yarn management issues, it’s going well.
Here’s the tree and the bird. There will be some embellishments before it’s all over, the pages have labels ‘tree’, ‘bird’ etc, and the bird gets a face too. One of the things I liked about these patterns is the finishing details. It looks really polished when all is said and done and the pattern has lots of instruction and pictures. I think I can handle it. We’ll see.
When I get sick of reading a chart and untangling all the different intarsia strands, I pick up my other crochet project, the Almond Shawl.
I’ve been trying to get this yarn into a shawl since April. I think I’ve finally hit on the right pattern here. This started off as a kit for the Casapinka shawl that dropped early in the pandemic. I wanted to like it but I forgot that her patterns have a selvedge that means you start every row with a purl stitch. F THAT. It annoys me to no end so I had to frog it. Then I tried a feather and fan sort of pattern, thinking the repetition would be easy but NO. Turns out, keeping the pattern in tact while adding one new stitch to the repeat on every row also annoyed me to no end.
Third time, as they say, is the charm with this one. This crochet pattern is just the right amount of stepping up my crochet but not going too far outside my comfort zone. It’s kind of hard to see in the picture but it’s a lot of double crochets and front post double crochets. Front post stitches always make things seem fancy!
I’m making good progress on the shawl, double crochets grow quickly! Unfortunately, we’re losing daylight quickly so I’ve really only got poorly lit nighttime photos of it (it’s only October 1…I’m dreading the days getting shorter already…the winter equinox seems soooooo far away. I’m sure you’ve noticed it too. UGH). I’ll try to get some good pics this weekend when I’ve got daylight. The front post crochet details are definitely worth seeing.
Anybody else trying new things lately? I can’t be the only one :)
FogKnits 