Wednesday, June 26, 2013

A memory blanket

When my mother died I kept her wool sweaters with the thought of felting them and making something as a keepsake out of the felted fabric. It took a long time before I could bring them out and felt them and even longer until I was finally able to do something with them. She was such a tiny lady and her sweaters were very small. To be able to use colours that went together and have enough squares to make a blanket of a usable size I added one of my wool jumpers to the mix. I left out some of the colours that didn't fit for another project.

To utilise as much of the wool fabric as possible I cut squares and rectangles. I  sewed them randomly together as I had varying numbers of the different coloured squares and placing them in a pattern or keeping the colours separate wasn't an option.

It's not finished yet but all the pieces have been pieced together.


Now I need to consider how to finish off the back and edging. That's for another day!

Cheers,
Lynds

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Lorelei Shawl

Oh what a lovely project this was to crochet. The pattern is the Lorelei Shawl by Kimberly McAlindin and  the yarn I used is Moda Vera Bouvardia in the colourway Blue Mix. I was drawn to the lovely long colour runs in this yarn. The colours are beautiful and there is enough wool in the mix to make it a nice yarn to work with and especially nice to wear.

It was good to mix it up a bit and do some crochet work. I don't do that very often but this pattern appealled to me and reminded me of the crochet shawls from years ago. It was very quick to make as the main motif is about 15 cms across. The overall size of the shawl/scarf is large. It's warm, soft and squishy and perfect for this time of year in Melbourne. It worked up very fast and the only hassle was weaving in the ends that I didn't weave in during the construction part.

It is toasty warm to double over and use as a lap blanket. I've been doing that every night since I finished it.



Cheers,
Lynda