Last Christmas...........

.....I had a full set of Clover Amour.

My son connived with a friend. I had half the set from him and the other half from her. I would show you the full set but they are scattered about in various projects, as any good hook should be.

This Christmas, my son bought me some beautiful hand made candle stick holders. Not that I plan to use them for candles but they will make beautiful bud vases for when I finally get all those crocheted flowers done.

So, I treated myself. A new set of Clover Amour, thread ones this time, in pastels to match the bright colours of the larger sizes. The only reason you get to see the full set is because they only arrived last Friday and the projects I am current working on are yarn not thread.

Soon, they will be scattered about in various projects.

And did you know, they come in bigger sizes now!

Blog Revival

I really need to get this blog up and running again. Hopefully, now that the bulk of the EU VAT work is out of the way, I will have more time for blogging as well as crocheting.

When I went to Ally Pally last year, I was a bit disappointed. It is now 5 days and the prices have gone up, making it far too expensive for the smaller yarn suppliers.

As a consequence, lots of regulars I was hoping to see again were not there. However, these people were. They are Jamiesons of Shetland and they had a stand full of gorgeous wool!

I can't resist wool. And I don't mean yarn (although most types of yarn are unresistible), I mean proper wool. It felt and smelt gorgeous.

They had shelves of kits along the back. All knitting, no crochet. I asked if they designed them and was told that a designer does it for them. Then I asked why there were no crochet kits and they said "We don't know a crochet designer".

They must have been waiting for me!

After showing some of my work and short discussion, I came home with four balls of this amazing yarn and a fat quarter of matching fabric. I have started designing something for it but using some acrylic aran. Wool spoils if you frog it too much. As soon as we are all happy with the practice piece (and I am the fussiest) I will make it up in the real stuff.

If they like my work, I get to play with a lot more of their yarn. Next year, they will be having some crochet kits on the stand!

Back to Crocheting

A whole load of events, over which I had no control, seemed to take over last year.

First there were the Distance selling regs which meant I had to re-evaluate the way I ran the website. With Ravelry not being able to provide a shopping cart which complied with the regulations, I had to change my instant download provider.

Then came the EU VAT. More changes to the website but many of which could no be done until the last minute due to not having clear guidelines to follow.

All of this meant no new patterns!!!!!

That is set to change this year. My first pattern is finished already! This Tiger blanket (no, not a Zebra) was designed in collaboration with one of my students, partly as a learning exercise. She is making hers in orange and black DK. I just used some yarn I had in my stash which happened to be cream and grey aran. It is worked in 3 panels, with the middle one being flipped over to match up the stripes before they are sewn together.

Short rows are used to make the wiggly stripes. These also make for an interesting pattern on the background. The pattern is just the first four stripes which are repeated. Because is is designed this way you can make it as big or as small as you wish. And in any type of yarn. The pattern is currently with testers and translators. Watch this space for when it will be available.