Converse Style Crochet Baby Bootees

My daughters friend is expecting her first baby in February, they have literally been friends all of their lives. Their birthdays are only 6 weeks apart and they had their first playdate when they were just 6 & 12 weeks old, they started school together at the same nursery when they were three and shared classes all the way through their senior years in education. It is quite amazing seeing this young lady that I have known all her life producing a new life herself.

I could not resist making these Converse style bootees for the little man, yes she already knows IT’S A BOY!

This cute pattern has been squirrelled away in my little stash, of ‘things to make one day’,  for a while now and I have been waiting for the opportunity to give it an airing.  I must be honest and say that it was on the third boot that I felt happy with how it was looking, it took the three goes to get the hang of making the front sit nicely – this was totally down to me being too eager to finish and not reading the pattern more carefully.

I have taken shots from all angles so you can get a good all round view so on to the side. The black trim line makes them look like the real thing don’t you think?

As I so often do I I have used good old Stylecraft DK which is always so great to work with, the choice of colours is fantastic especially for these little boots.

And the back, I still think I should be able to improve on the joins that you can see on the white sole here.

Then on to my favourite finishing touch – the laces!

I love the finishing touches on this pattern, it describes how to coat the end of the laces in glue and leave to dry before trimming so they look like real laces.

So if you have a little critter of your own or indeed anyone else’s you want to make these for……… the pattern by Suzanne Resaul is available via the home of many great patterns – Ravelry.

It is a very popular pattern around the globe and has been translated into Swedish by Pysselkiisen,  Spanish by Duendecilla. and more recently Italian by Mirella.

Please note that this pattern has kindly been made available for you to use and enjoy free of any charge, also you may sell shoes from the pattern, the only thing is that is required is that you give the credit for the pattern design to Suzanne, and lets face it, she really does deserve it.

THANK YOU SUZANNE.

Flower Version – Amish Puzzle Ball

I am so taken with these fun little balls, I have made 3 regular ones now and I also had a go at an elephant but that is another story!

Thought I would try the flower version to add to my growing collection. It works pretty much the same as the other pattern in principle except you make flowers for the tops instead of the oval shapes. I did download a pattern here which is free, thank you to Dedri Uys, check out her pages on Ravelry she has lots more ideas using this unusual pattern.

I regret to say that I was not keen on the four petal flowers so decided to adapt the flowers a bit and have tried making a 5 petal version. I also chose to make a multi coloured version rather than the monochrome style shown in the pattern. I am hoping to get it finished in the next couple of days so I will let you see how it goes.

Blanket CAL Baby Sized Blanket

Here is my finished blanket, it is only a baby sized blanket which will explain how I have finished whilst this great CAL is still ongoing.

With the blanket about the right size I needed to think about the edging. I always feel that this is such an important part of a blanket as it frames it and pulls it all together to showcase the pattern. As there is a great deal of pattern going on in this blanket I wanted to keep it really simple.

I started with a simple double crochet followed by a round of 1 half treble chain 1.

Then I tried a stitch I haven’t used before as a final finishing round, reverse double crochet. I think I will be able to get this stitch neater next time I do it. If you haven’t tried it it is a single crochet but you work from left to right and creates a rolling twisted stitch that also has a bit of depth.

A huge thank you to Hannah over at not your average crochet for running the fantastic CAL and introducing me to some new stitch patterns. I am sure that many of us will be revisiting her pages again in the future to do this project again.

And for anyone who has not joined yet remember it is never to late to join in, my sister at happy to make you joined at week number 12 and has now caught up with the current week.

Floral Cushion Work in Progress

The pattern for these gorgeous little flowers was found purely by accident one day whilst perusing Ravelry, and what a great find, aren’t they cute. It’s not easy to show in the images but the way they are made gives them a great depth and texture. They are great for using up scraps too, I am using Rico Essentials Soft Merino Aran scraps that I have left from making our daughters blanket last year.

The mistake I made was not following the instruction in the pattern about joining the flowers together as I went, I just merrily went on my way making them all individually and pinning them onto my cushion. I wanted to be free to arrange and re-arrange the colours. No problem, or so I thought. I would simply sew them together at the end. Oh dear, I definitely do not recommend this, it is taking me ages!

It will be worth it in the end I am sure but it is not a mistake I would make twice. They do look good but as you can see I do have a way to go yet.

The pattern is by Adi Keren available on Ravelry here there is such a lovely story behind it too, Adi along with other members of the family made flowers then Adi brought them all together to create a gorgeous blanket for her nephew. She explains that between them they used scraps in blues and greens in a mixture of yarn types and weights, this added even more texture.

Bright and Bold Baby Blanket

It has been an absolute pleasure making this colourful baby blanket and so quick too.

Using the same simple pattern I made 5 squares in each colour from my pay day stash, which incidentally is almost gone now.

Then laid them out random style following no pattern what-so- ever, so satisfying. Sorry about the colours, I am having a bit of a camera issue this the evening. this is a mixture of bold and bright colours mixed with a pale pink, blue and beige to provide a contrast.

I had almost enough squares but not quite so I laid the balls of yarn out in place of the remaining squares to help me decide which colours I needed to finish.

I wanted to try one of the borders from my new book Around The Corner Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman. It is a fabulous book, not only is it packed with a varied range of borders it also explains how to count stitches around you work to make up your own border.

I settled for number 132 on page 269, I liked the way the bobbles reflected the holes formed by the pattern in the squares.

Highly recommend this book if you are a blanket or cushion cover maker.

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Crochet Mini Bunting

Just a quick little post to share with you about this little heap of scrumptious colourful bunting.

I have made this before and really loved it so just could not resist the opportunity to make some more and I had the perfect excuse when it was a friends birthday this week.

This pattern was purchased from another blogger Zoomyummy through her Etsy store, the pattern is rather aptly titled Big Flower Party and includes several gorgeous flower patterns which I have also used to make flower garlands. The bunting is on the back page of the pattern.

The Mini Bunting is great fun to make and adds a splash of colour wherever you decide to hang it. The only trouble is once you start making it it’s hard to stop, I just keep thinking ‘it would look really good in this colour’ and make another one!

But alas I have to stop for now and get back to finishing Missy L’s blanket, the squares are nearly all joined now, only 19 left to do and I will be able to share a great ta dah moment with you.

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Update for Multi Flower Squares Crochet Blanket Number 4

I have been busy making a blanket for each of our 4 children and this is the 4th and final one which is for our eldest daughter, Missy L. I recently posted Multi Flower Squares Crochet Blanket Number 4 of 4 and thought I should give you an update on progress.

So here goes! I started making a few squares with no absolutely no idea about the final pattern design, here is my nicely growing stack of squares.

In addition to the squares in the last post I have done some more different patterns for the plain colours.

And another variety of Granny Squares, these will be in different colours too.

The brief for this blanket was “I love Granny Squares and would like the pattern to be a bit random, ‘hotchpotchy”, which was vague but fine, however I wanted it to have a floral influence and after all I am making it aren’t I?

So here are the flower patterns.

and this one that I have made up myself, really pleased with this one! A tutorial will follow this post.

It has been a real challenge to create a pattern that would fit the brief for a random look and include my flowers. I created these two rows first and was really happy with how they looked.

But after making some granny squares and adding them into the mix I started to have doubts.

But I resolved to continue making squares and each time I set them out I came up with a different formation.

Oh dear, I started to get really worried that this project was not going well. I was simply not feeling it, you know how it is when your developing a project, you just instinctively know that something is not right, the colour balance is out.

Then one evening I got out the squares again and set about laying them out and at last it started to fall into place. I realised that a totally random selection would be difficult to make work and that it needed some kind of sequence.

There are 2 sequences at work in this pattern and both include order and a randomness.  Working diagonally from bottom left to top right are the plain colours, order comes from being the same colour, randomness from each square being a different pattern. Working from bottom right to top left are the flower and granny squares, here order is represented by the same pattern being repeated but the use of different colours provides the random feature. Now all the gaps are filled in it looks like this.

You can see the pattern sequence more easily now all the squares are there.

Now I am really happy this is going to work into a real fine blanket. All I have to do now is crochet them all together and add the border then I can share the ta dah moment with you.

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Multi Flower Squares Crochet Blanket Number 4 of 4

This is the last blanket, number 4 for my lovely Missy L and these are the colours from the Debbie Bliss Rialto DK range.

We have not discussed the pattern yet so I think I will be doing my usual and just starting with a few squares at random and seeing where it goes.

I found a pattern I really liked on Ravelry called Groovyghan although it gets its name in part from the bright colours used and my colours are more muted I wanted to use this particular flower pattern.

My thoughts are to do a few different flower pattern squares, I have chosen this design too which is a bit of a hybrid made using different patterns and some of my own interpretation.

I also want to incorporate a traditional granny square pattern.

These designs will be broken up with some self coloured squares. This is from the Jan Eaton 200 crochet blocks book that I have used before, pattern number 86 Sunray.

And pattern number 30 Shell Lace.

Now I am getting a nice collection of squares together I will have to start and work on the layout for this blanket soon. I think I am starting to have an idea about how it will work but I will share that with you soon.

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Crochet Granny Square Afghan – Update

Well I got a lovely surprise when I got onto work yesterday!

I had received a box full of lovely crochet squares and a letter from Mama H. I am so pleased with the colours we chose, when you see them altogether they look really vibrant and cheerful.

I cannot believe how quickly she has got this many done.

When I emptied the box I found a variety of patterns from Granny Twin Stripes No. 5.

Corner Granny No. 7

Then Mama H started to get more adventurous with these Alternate Bobbles N0. 17 in plain colours.

And the wonderfully colourful Arcadia N0. 9

And some more single colour blocks called Openwork Square N0. 10

I have done a few more as well which I will show you later when we start to arrange our blanket into a pattern. Mama H wrote in her letter that we may need some more plain squares and I think she may well be right but I will let you know in our next update.

If you like Granny Squares I found some interesting links below that you might want to take a peek at too.

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More Colourful Crochet Stripy Cats for the Cat Gallery

I so love making these gorgeous cats, this little chap was for my sister-in-law who loves cats. I chose colours from C’s favourite colour palette of blues and greens. I don’t know what she has called him yet but I know I can be assured he has gone to a loving home.

And here is Thomas.

I was so flattered when my colleague at work asked me to crochet a Stripy Cat for her friend who had just found out that she was expecting. It was great as I got to choose the colours, I went a bit mad and just used all my favourites so there was no particular plan at the start. I really like how he turned out though and thankfully so did my colleague.

Before Thomas left for his new home he did have a bit of a frolic with my Henry.

Please find a link to this fabulous book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baby-Crochet-Designs-Babies-Months/dp/1904485871 . Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.