Friday 28 January 2011

Folksy Friday - the power of green

In honor of finally getting one of my new crochet kits listed, (on Etsy, not yet Folksy) I thought I would feature some lovely things in my new colour, olive green. This is actually the only shade of green that I like and it is one of my favourite colours. I looked on the internet for a more interesting name to give my new colour kit. I couldn't find any but I did find out that the shade nearest my wool is called olive drab!! who on earth would want to call a colour that. Especially such a wonderful colour. Then (after I'd posted it on Etsy) I remembered that one of my favourite gem stones is Peridot which is olive green...duh..still I did find Olivine to call it. That is another gemstone and infact Peridot is a kind of Olivine.
So less of the waffle here are the picks.



 


A sweet book thong to start with available here

And of course my own media, I really like the big knit pattern and the misty shade


 And then sticking with fabric a gorgeous bag, no, no I have too many bags..sigh..

 Click here



And here is some beautiful jewellery...


And last but not least an example of that lovely stone..

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Doris Chan

I've just been reading my birthday present, Doris Chan's Amazing Crochet Lace. Great, I've really been enjoying it. I  want to try some of the patterns but its very difficult knowing what English yarn I can use. I do like books that give you alternatives not just one yarn, still that's just a little niggle.

Before I start I need to do some practice on foundation crochet. I tried it once and worked out how to do it but when I tried it the other day for I pattern I'm doing from CrochetMe. (finally got my first issue, I suscribed in May, but that's another story) it didn't work. Doris Chan gives a slightly different method in this book so I must get round to trying....I don't like the preperation, I just want to jump straight in....which leads neatly on to my next point. Tension Samples, more like tension headaches. I have found time after time that no matter how carefully I knit or crochet my swatch the finished garment never comes out the right size. Imagine how pleased I was to read Doris's thoughts on this, she points out that crochet stretches, that there are all sorts of other things which make tension samples redundant. I have found this with my own patterns that I write, so now I don't feel so guilty about my tension samples not even matching my own designs. One amazingly wonderful advantage that crochet has over knitting is that its possible to see within a short time whether your garment is the right size, although this doesn't take stretching into account, but for width rather than length this works well. On one cardigan that I made I ended up doing the first two or three rows of the pattern and measuring this to the schematics. Even doing this a couple of times was better than endless tension headaches. Mind you that stretched like no ones business...sigh..

The picture above is from a free pattern so I hope Doris Chan won't mind me using it. Click here to find the pattern.

Sunday 2 January 2011

Finally getting round to doing another blog. So much water under the bridge but not much crochet news as most of the time was taken up with Christmas celebrations.

I'm posting some pictures of the craft fair I went to at Sutton House, a local National Trust property. I did enjoy it, well at least on the Sunday but despite huge crowds of people I didn't sell much. Just covered my stall costs and not all of mine and my children's fueling!!

Now that the whole xmas/birthday/new year/nother birthday binge is nearly over I should get back to concentrating on Etsy and Folksy. I did quite well in September/October but then all the momentum I had built up was completely lost because I stopped to concentrate on making stuff for the craft fairs. It takes a lot of work and time on the computer to make Etsy and Folksy pay. Also the best results I got were when I was posting new products almost every day. I could only do that because I made and photographed quite a lot of stuff over the summer, but didn't do any actual posting or much online work. I can't actually make stuff that quickly so I can't see me being able to do that all year round.

I have got some stuff left that I could put on sale and I have some new kits to photograph but I just can't seem to get started. It doesn't help that its cold and grey outside as I have to photograph my stuff outside to get any decent natural light.

Oh well sorry to rant on but it helps me to put down in writing some of this stuff, probably not exactly riveting reading though....lol....