New Crochet Magazines

Yesterday I went to our monthly Knit Out of the Knitting Noras. We were a little depleted in numbers due to holidays and fatigue following visits to Wonderwool. Deb kindly gave me a lift there which I was really grateful for as my knee was still trying to recover from the Art Gallery steps.

I got a copy of the new Inside Crochet which Deb had picked up for me in Bolton and Crochet Today which Kath had managed to pick up a copy for me in Manchester. I do enjoy getting new crochet magazines although they are so much harder to find in newsagents than knitting magazines are. I love them and books even though I don't always make things from them. I have posted a few photos from Inside Crochet today. I will add Crochet Today tomorrow. I have to say that Inside crochet is less likely to be used by me as although a lot of the designs are nice I am just so not into crocheting circles as I really struggle linking them together. Inside crochet seem to have cornered the market with circles in this issue.

The Meadow scarf I might make for my niece as there are only 14 circular motifs and they only get joined on one side. The Cecily Moebius is worse at 42 circles joined on all sides. Personally I am not into Moebius at all. I prefer a straightforward scarf. Ellie is a child's bolero that would only ever get used as a party jacket or a bridesmaid outfit but I shudder at 115 circular crochet motifs joined on all sides and so it is definitely not on my project list.

As for the socks - well decorative is probably the right word to use. I doubt if they would be comfy in my shoes when out walking. Sacha Kagan's granny fringed top may appeal to some but even the hippy within won't let me make and wear that myself. Not even over a T shirt. Although I have enjoyed reading the magazine I do think it is a bit over priced at £4.99 as it is riddled with adverts and promotional features and only has 13 patterns.

I took Lisa's jacket to the Knit out and left it with Bev to give to Lisa when she comes back from her camping trip. Bev is a similar size to Lisa so kindly modelled the Granny takes a trip jacket as when I put things on Flickr I always get requests for photos of me wearing things which is a bit difficult when I am twice the size as the person that I have made the garment for!

More photos of Granny Takes a trip

I tried the "Granny Takes a Trip" jacket on today and immediately started singing "I wore my coat of many colours" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat. Lisa intends to wear the jacket when she visits the festivals this summer. I hope for her sake that it is not a hot summer as she will swelter in this jacket.

If you look closely you will see that there are two of each square in the jacket. I think I did well to make 38 squares without repeating a sequence. I am showing both sleeves as each godet is a different colour making the sleeves different to each other. The edging has loops with shells made in each loop. three of these will form the button holes for the front. That is the one thing I have left to make. 3 crochet buttons.

I haven't done any crochet last night or today so far. Last night it was after 7pm when my son and his wife picked Buster up. I didn't have any dog food left for his dinner so I didn't make my dinner until he had gone home as I could not stand his little face looking at me for his dinner. By the time I had made dinner and eaten it I just fell asleep on the sofa.

Today I am cleaning the lounge, stairs and my bedroom. I have had to wash the throws and all of the cushions. I don't know how I coped when I had Buster full time. He sheds so much hair. I will do the dining room and kitchen tomorrow.

I hope to do some crochet when I have finished for the day if I am not too tired.

"Granny takes a trip" is blocking

All it needs now is 3 crochet buttons and Granny Takes a Trip is finished. If you like making heaps of granny squares, have lots of oddments and like standing out in a crowd then you can get the pattern by clicking on the blog title. I hope that Lisa will like it when she sees it. I will try to post better photos tomorrow without all the pins and with buttons. The sleeves are really wide and hard to show whilst it is blocking out on boards.

A friend used to tell me that I was good at making something out of nothing and I must admit that it gives me a thrill to see a garment made from bits and pieces that some people might throw away or knit toys or stripey scarves with. I used some of Lisa's oddments plus some of my oddments from stash and between us we didn't buy one ball of wool for this jacket.

I am going to start a jacket tonight for me to wear at my niece's wedding and guess what. The jacket I like best has motifs included in it. At least they are not multi coloured granny squares as I feel all grannied out at the moment. Every time I finish off a biggish project using granny squares I say never again but a few weeks further down the line I start again. They are such a good way of using oddments up in a decorative way.

Buster is going home tonight. I will have a mammoth clean up, knee permitting, tomorrow and de hair the house.

The squares are finished - now the work begins

76 squares, plus 2 half squares and 10 godets have been made. Now the work begins. The assembly. Thankfully this time I have crocheted over the tails as I went along so at least I don't have all of those to sew in however I am going to suggest that Lisa carries with her a needle and thread when she wears this jacket as my sewing up skills leave a lot to be desired. No matter how hard I try there will always be bits poking out somewhere.

I think it will be tomorrow or Tuesday before the whole jacket is assembled. I then have to crochet all the way around it for the borders, crochet a shell edging and make some crochet buttons to fasten the jacket together.

I went with Julie and her two dogs for a walk with Buster today. Thank God for Julie. I don't know what I would have done without her. She threw sticks for Buster and wore him out for me. My knee was so painful yesterday I didn't think that I would make the walk today. I dug into my stash of strong painkillers left over from my spinal pain and took those and have managed to hobble through the day.

Last night I felt like I had red hot pokers stabbing into my knee. At one stage I was on the point of ringing for an ambulance as the pain was that bad. I am sure that this is not right and I am going to ring the hospital on Tuesday and leave a message for my specialist. I am not a wimp and had suffered crippling pain in my back for many years before my spinal op but this pain in my knee is relentless. It does not stop when I sit down or put my feet up. I am getting hardly any sleep as the moment I lay down the pain starts in earnest. I have tried pillows under it, warm bean bags and still it wakes me up quite a few times during the night. I try not to cry out too loudly as next door might wonder what is going on in my bedroom, but it takes my breath away sometimes and I have to let out a scream. I expected the pain to have diminished by now but instead it is escalating. It is far worse now than it was the first week after my op. I can't understand why it is so painful. It's not like I had a new knee joint fitted.

I managed to sit in the garden for a while whilst I was sewing some of the squares together. Normally I would crochet them together but as the last row of these squares is all in trebles it made a lumpy edge so I decided to stitch them together to be neater. Buster thought my sitting in the garden was a signal for a game of ball. I just wish that he would bring the ball to me and not leave it a foot away from me. Luckily I had taken my walking stick into the garden with me so it acted as a ball hook and hockey stick for retrieving and then whacking the ball. It's hard to get much sewing up done when the game is never ending.

Much as I enjoy Buster's company I will be glad when my son comes to take him home tomorrow.

49 squares

Not much to blog about today except to say that the sun is shining and I have now made 49 squares.

Things will slow down once Buster comes to visit tomorrow night. I can't do much crochet with a boxer crossed with staffordshire bull terrier lap dog! He is visiting until Monday so there will be dog photos instead of crochet square photos!

More than half way there

I am more than half way through the jacket now. I have made 38 of the 76 squares and am now on the duplications of each square so at least I don't have to dream up different colourways for every square anymore. That took the longest. Searching through the squares to make sure I had each one different. Now I just grab the colours I had used before and make a duplicate square. As I have already made the godets or inserts for the sleeves I just have to concentrate on finishing off the squares.

I am going to try to get up to the Post Office today to post off Thelonious Sock Monkey. I will take my 4 wheeler trolley to lean on as I hobble up there. The knee is a bit less painful each day.

I am looking after Buster over the Easter holidays so am hoping that my knee will be recovered enough to be able to walk him in the woods. Julie, my next door neighbour, is looking after her mum's dog as well as her own and has said that she will walk with me so at least Buster will have some doggy companions to walk with.

The sun is trying to shine today. I just wish that it would get a bit warmer so I could get my sun lounger out and sit out in the garden. I always feel so much better when the sun shines. I think we all do. A bit of sunshine is what we all need after all the gloom and doom of the last few months. Problems seem to recede in the sunshine plus a wee bit of a suntan makes us all look a lot healthier.

I didn't manage to get to the Kings Arms Knit Out last night as Charlie who offers me a lift had to finish off a journalist project by today and so was busy working last night. The only time that I miss not having a car of my own any more is when it is Knit Out days and nights. Maybe I should learn how to ride a motorbike as they are much cheaper to run.

28 Crochet Squares

28 crochet squares made for Lisa's jacket and I haven't repeated a colour sequence twice yet. Some squares are similar colour wise but not identical. I have passed the third mark and am hoping to get to the half way stage by tonight. I have pinned them out on my blocking board to make it easier to see the colour sequences when I am choosing the colours for the next square. Eventually I will have to have identical squares but I am hoping that I will only have to repeat squares twice. If I can make another 10 different sequence squares then I will have managed it.

I may not make the half way stage if I am lucky enough to get a lift tonight to the Kings Arms knitters as I don't want to lug a big bag of wool with me. I have a couple of balls of pale grey Sublime Kid Mohair left from the capelet that I can turn into a small crochet scarf so I will take that with me if I go.

The weather is dry but the sun is nowhere to be seen. I did manage to get out into the garden to finish off the sock monkey in the sunshine over the weekend but I doubt if I will be sitting out this week as the forecast is for colder weather.

I gave in and went back on the strong painkillers so my knee pain is bearable at the moment. I will give it another week to heal before I step them down again.

Thelonious (sock) Monkey

The travelling sock monkey is finished. He will be heading to Kentucky early next week. I had asked for ideas of what to call him when I was at the Knitting Noras Knit Out last week. Eadaoin at first suggested Elvis but as the sock monkey's new owner is a fan of Blues and Jazz she then suggested Thelonious Monkey after the great Jazz musician Thelonious Monk. I liked that idea so now that is his name. He is wearing a black waistcoat and beret when he is in his jazz musician persona and a red baseball cap and scarf when he is in his sporty sock monkey mood. His new owner is also an avid sports fan.

June has asked me about the Travelling Monkeys and I think that Ravelry describes what is happening better than I can. There is a group on there called John Deere Tractor Drivers and they started off the idea using a pattern called Sock Monkey by Yvonne Boucher. I think the general idea is that you knit a monkey and then it goes off on it's travels and gets photographed in various places all over the world and each new foster mum adds to it's wardrobe after which it returns to the knitter mum eventually. Bev who was on the You Tube video when the Bolton Knitting Noras got interviewed on Channel M TV brought with her Ladybird Murphy who originated from Ireland and was staying with Bev for a month. She will now have gone on her travels again. If you want to see photographs and learn more then visit the John Deere Tractor Drivers forum if you are a Ravelry member.

My sock monkey will only be going to Kentucky as he is a gift. I have instructed James that Thelonious has to be photographed near a recognisable Kentucky landmark in keeping with being a travelling sock monkey.

Knitting the sock monkey has taken a lot longer than I ever thought it would. I am sure that I could have crocheted a sweater in the time it has taken me to make him. I will never be into this amigurumi knit and crochet. Far too time consuming and fiddly in my eyes. I prefer to use my skills for things to wear rather than toys.

I will be back to the crochet squares tonight. I am now up to 22 so still a long way to go before I reach 76.

20 squares done - only 56 more to make!

As you can see I have made 20 squares for Lisa's jacket and so far not repeated a colour sequence. That is the hardest part. Deciding which colours to do next. It takes me as long to do that as it does to make the square.

I have also made all of the triangles that go into the sleeves to make the bell shape and the two black triangles that fit at each side to widen the jacket for the hips. I wanted to do these so that I knew that I had enough wool in each colour left to make each triangle in a single colour. I can always use bits and pieces of colours in the squares.

My brother came yesterday to take me to Tesco to do some food shopping. I was grateful for this as I was wondering if my knee would stand up to the journey to and from Tesco pushing my fully laden 4 wheeled granny trolley. I bought enough food to stock me up for a couple of weeks whilst I had the luxury of a car to transport it all home for me. My knee ached after that but I am determined to walk up to the village later today whilst the weather is so nice.

I am going to concentrate on knitting today. Poor sock monkey has not had a row knitted on him since the Sunday Knitting Noras Knit Out so I am giving my hands a change of craft. I will probably return to my crochet later as knitting is not my forte these days.

Swirls Cap

This is the Swirls Cap by Sophia Kessinger. For those on Ravelry it is available as a free download. When Lisa gave me the bag with wool in to make her the Granny Takes a Trip jacket there were two balls of Rowan RYC Soft Lux in the bag. She had admired the cap that I had made for Jen some time ago from the same yarn (different colour) so I decided to make one for her.

I expected to race through the pattern as I had made it once before but for some reason my brain was not reading the pattern right and I was the queen of unravelling yesterday. I finished it off eventually but I am convinced that it isn't exactly the same as the one I made for Jen. It seems a little bigger in the crown. Lucky for me Lisa has quite a lot of hair so hopefully her hair will pad out the crown and it will look better on her than it does on me with my baby fine hair.

I am on my 12th square for the jacket. It takes me longer to work out which colours to use for each square than it does to actually crochet them. I am trying to make as many as possible without repeating the exact same colour changes.

My knee is more painful today than it has been all week. I expect I am too impatient but I really expected to be up and running about by now. I have to walk up to the village today for some food and my prescription, I didn't make it to Tesco yesterday. Luckily I always have enough things in my freezer to cover such emergencies.

Granny takes a Trip

Granny Takes a Trip is the name of the wonderfully colourful jacket that I am making for Lisa a Fellow Knitting Nora Calendar Lady. The pattern is by Ellene Warren and can be bought on Ravelry or other web sites I presume.I have made 6 squares so far so have only got 66 more to make plus 2 halves! This time I am crocheting over the tail ends as I go as the pattern suggests. I am sure that there will still be tail ends poking out of it all over the place but at least they will be secure.

I had a problem with having all the balls of wool spilling over the coffee table and the floor. It's hard to keep them tidy when each square is different. Choosing the colour sequences takes as much time as crocheting the square. I will have to duplicate some eventually but I will see how many variations I can do before that happens. I have pinched the bottom drawer from my craft stacking drawers in an attempt to keep them a bit tidier.

I diverted from the crochet squares last night to crochet a hat and have almost finished it. I still have the brim and the trim to make so photos of that hopefully tomorrow.

I have done a little more on the sock monkey similar to Ladybird Murphy and he almost has a body now. I have chosen grey, red and white as it is for a guy.

I am off to watch Loose Women now and try to finish off the hat.