The First Crochet Project

About a year ago I found a crochet project online and having got a little bored of just doings lots of chain or going backwards and forwards practicing crochet stitches, I thought this might be a good project to hone my skills.
It is a temperature blanket. It consists of granny squares using different colours to represent the temperature for each day - so that means a whopping 365 squares to crochet. That should be good, regular practice if nothing else.
It was easy enough to find historical temperatures on the internet but I must have forgotten about the project or maybe I did decide to wait until this year.
So on New Year's Eve when younger people were out partying, I was at home with a glass of something and surfing the web looking at colours and eventually buying wool. That might not have been my best idea as some of the colours were not ideal when they arrived and there were gaps, but with another shopping spree a few weeks later, I had my range of colours sorted and lined up as above.
It might make more sense now looking at the colours as obviously the cool blues represent the cold temperatures and the reds the nice hot ones - watch it be a cold miserable summer this year! With the colours sorted and all lined up in order, I was ready to go.

Final Bakewell Purchase

This was the last item I bought at the Bakewell Wool Gathering - cute little fruit stitch markers - if I use them does that count as part of my 5 a day? Or is it 10 now - good grief! Not sure whether to keep these myself yet - I have some plain ones but they fall off the needles - or whether to gift them to some knitter. Decisions, decisions.
Need to download more photos before I can update the blog again. Not sure how many I have in the camera but certainly made some progress on projects this year :-)

Another Purchase

This was another purchase from the Bakewell Wool Gathering. It is alpaca wool and purchased from the lady who rears them. She learnt to crochet so she could make use of the yarn. With my beginner crochet skills at the time (miles of chain) she said that I could make a scarf purely from chain stitch, so based on that I purchased this wool. Still not started :-(
Looking at the stash of unstarted projects upstairs I really must stop buying stuff!

Shopping

Some months ago, October to be precise, I headed off early one Sunday morning to beat the crowds at the Bakewell Wool Gathering. And of course you have to buy - it would be rude not to - so here is purchase 1 of 3. Some beautiful wool/silk in 'my' colours. This was bought to knit a scarf which is finished and has been worn - photo of that to follow in another post.
I also bumped into some friends there, which was an added bonus and lovely to catch up with them.

Ta-Dah - Santa

I made this Father Christmas at a workshop at Buttons and Bows in Belper (sadly closed now) well over a year ago, but didn't quite finish it. I decided the sack was too plain and I wanted to put something on it like holly perhaps. In the end when I had some holiday from work to watch Wimbledon, I managed to finish it by adding a cross-stitch snowman to the sack - the sack fabric was ideal for doing cross-stitch.

Twiddlemitts - 3

Here is a Twiddlemitt before it is double-layered. Finished knitted length and stitched down the long side. Then it is pulled back into the tube to halve the length before stitching the ends together and decorating.

Twiddlemitts - 2

Here is another twiddlemitt. It might not be obvious from the picture but it is a double layered knitted tube and includes bits inside the tube to twiddle with as well as outside. This one I think had a pom-pom inside and would definitely have had a button or two on the inside. Just visible at the top is a bow - probably from an old cracker - you know, the sort of thing crafty types keep - just in case it has a use - well, yes they do - on twiddlemitts!