Monday, May 18, 2015

granny blanket : blooming granny

Happy Monday!  
It seems these days that all I have time for at this little blog is to hook up each week's 12 -inch granny blanket square.  I'm hoping that will change during the upcoming summer months.
Speaking of summer, everything here in New England is growing and blooming.  Which brings us to this week's square:

WEEK TWENTY ONE || Blooming Granny
by Melinda Miller
This square hooks up super fast (I know because I waited until this morning to hook mine--oops!)


Monday, May 11, 2015

granny blanket : mum's the word

Good Monday Morning!
And happy belated Mother's Day to all of you! I hope you had a wonderful weekend celebrating the mothers in your life.
In honor of Mother's Day, here is our square for this week:

WEEK TWENTY || Mum's the Word

I love the way this one hooked up.  It was fun playing with colors and I love April's combination of stitches.

As always,

Monday, May 4, 2015

crochet : tulip cozy

Just popping in with a little pattern share today.

ABOVE PHOTO IS NOT MINE.  PLEASE DON'T PIN.  THANKS SO MUCH!
How pretty, right?  The only trouble is that the pattern is in Dutch, and my Dutch is a little rusty er, non-existent.  Luckily, she included a link to the inspiration for her pattern in her post:

Red Heart Flowers in a Row Blanket

Using both patterns I was able to come up with an English version to share with you.  Yippee!
This cozy will fit a 1 quart (4 cup) mason jar using a number 7  4.5mm hook and worsted weight yarn.

Chain 54 and join to first join (careful not to twist the chain).
Rounds 1 and 2: ch 1 (does not count as a stitch), sc in each stitch around, join to first stitch with a slst. (54 sc)

Round 3: (stem round) Join green yarn with a standing double crochet in any sc, ch1, dc in same stitch , skip 2 st, dc, ch1, dc (v-stitch) in next stitch, skip 2 st, v-stitch in next, around. (18 v-stitches)

Round 4: (bud round) Join pink yarn with a partial standing double crochet (yo, insert hook in space, draw up loop, pull through 2 loops) in ch1 space of any v-stitch.  Finish cluster with two more partial dc ([yo, insert hook, draw up loop, pull through] 2 times, yo, pull through all 4 loops), ch2.  Repeat on dc cluster in each v-stitch space, ch2 between each cluster.  Don't ch2 before join, instead join with a hdc to top of first cluster. (18 flower buds)

Round 5: (sc rounds) Join yarn with a standing sc in any space between flowers, sc in same space, *sc in top of flower cluster, 2sc in space, repeat from * around, join with slst to first sc. (54 sc)

Round 6 and 7: Ch1, sc in same space as join and in each sc around, join with slst to first sc. (54 sc).

Continue with round 3 and repeat alternating stems, flowers, and 3 rounds of sc until you have three rows of flowers.  Finish the jar topper with rows of sc, alternating colors as desired and decreasing by one or two stitches each round to follow the contour of the jar.

I loved this so much I made one for an Insta friend and sent it off to her last week.





granny blanket : may pole

Happy Sunny Monday!
It is a gorgeous day here and I am beyond grateful for the warmer weather, sunshine and the day off from work to enjoy it all!  There will be some outside crochet for me as soon as I get this week's square up.  So let's get on with it.

WEEK NINETEEN || May Pole

I loved hooking up this square and couldn't help but share a sneak peek of its progress on Instagram

I could totally see a whole blanket of these circles.  Or how about face scrubbies?  Ooh, I may feel an end-of-year teacher gift project coming on...

Hope you will give this square a try.  I did need to omit the last couple of rounds and alter the pattern so the square came out to the right size for my blanket.

Here's what I did in place of round 14:
Join yarn in first space of any corner (between multiCL and dcCL) with a standing partial dc (leave last 2 loops on hook,) finish the dcCL as original pattern states.  ch3, dcCL in next space (corner made)
*sc in next 2 stitches (top of multiCL), hdc in space after cluster, dc in next 2 stitches. (These stitches are done over the first group of dcCL): hdc before next dcCL, sc between clusters, sc in top of middle cluster, sc between 2nd and 3rd cluster, hdc in space after cluster.
hdc in next 2 stitches, hdc before multiCL, sc in top of multiCL, hdc after multiCL, hdc in next 3 stitches.
(These stitches are done over the second group of dcCL): hdc before next dcCL, sc between clusters, sc in top of middle cluster, sc between 2nd and 3rd cluster, hdc in space after cluster.
hdc in next st, hdc in space before first corner cluster, sc in next 2 stitches (top of cluster).
dcCL in first space of corner, ch3, dcCL in next space*

Repeat from * to * on remaining three sides.