Blissfully soft,warm fingerless gloves: my first attempt!

Above my first attempt at fingerless gloves and I LOVE them!!!

It's from a pattern in Melody Griffiths: Crochet in no time book , but I made them in Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino yarn: they are blissfully soft and aaah soooo warm..!( pardon the pun)

I used a 3.5mm hook and made one glove in an evening: including sewing in all the ends...

The greyed navy is shade 207 , the lilacy baby blue is shade 605 and the deeper lilac is 606.

One glove takes 18 grammes of the navy/main colour,

10 grammes of the deep lilac: or first contrast and

8 grammes of the pale blue colour.

The yarn has 2.5m to each gramme of yarn so that meand you'd need 45 metres of the main colour, 25 m of first contrast and 20 m of the second contrast.( for those of you who are going to substitute and need to know the yardages: 1 yard is 90 cm or 0.9 of a metre.

( ie you'd need 50 yards of the main color - this is for the USA readers)

The book has the instructions for fingers as well but I've never had nor made fingerless ones so I was dying to give them a go.

It's the yarn which makes them unbelievably soft: 12% Cashmere and 55% Merino wool,the rest is microfibre.

Now I have my daughters wanting them for Autumn, but in different colours...!!!

Would be PERFECT as stash buster gloves and superb quick pressies too....Any DK wool or yarn could be used.

Or as they use so little you could make them in a super luxury yarn and not break the bank!

Matching Scarves and Beanies to follow shortly in September: WATCH THIS SPACE!

I have the ideas, and will be writing the patterns...

Circles jacket in turquoise blues

Here is my current WIP , I wanted to show it to make me get on and finish it : it's been languising in a basket since I had to get on with the baby jackets as they were needed to be finished BEFORE the babies were due!!!!

My sister in law had a baby girl on August 2nd in Delhi, India .

She's called Arina and is absolutely beautiful of course!!!

I'm very much looking forward to meeting her in November when they are due to come back to the U.K. for a while.

The jacket on the left was inspired by a pattern in a Dutch magazine which I bought in Delft in May.

I bought cotton yarns in Delft at the time and added them to the variegated one I already had at home, I had to go and buy a bit( read a lot) more of this from Shipston on Stour...!!!

I'm also adapting the neckline to be a V-neck and am planning to crochet the sleeves directly onto the shoulder line and work downwards so that for once I should be able to get the sleeve length right!!!And if not I can add a bit or undo a bit...!

I'm not yet decided how it will be finished in the front in terms of buttonbands, or not or trimmings or maybe just ties....

The picture on the right is me blocking the 2 front pieces in the very little sunshine we have had this ''summer''....!!!!!

As an update : yes it IS raining again and has been all day with a forecast of 4 more days of the same but at least I thank God ( truly , honestly) that we haven't been flooded unlike some parts of the County of Oxfordshire.

And now I had better get on with working out how to do the stitches for this....!

I'm planning to take it on holiday.....

PS Now I look at it in the pictures I wish I had worked the circle stripes to lie vertically!

Library granny bag

This is a project that was finally completed beacuse our dog bit through our bookbag which we used on a weekly basis for our library books.

She chewed right through the canvas shoulderstraps : thus rendering it useless!!!

And as my 2 girls and I go to the library weekly and they sometimes take out as many as 10 books each we need a sturdy bag to carry them all home in!!!

Now the granny squares were made from leftover DK cotton ( Sirdar) in October 2005 and I had them lying around as one does in one of my many knitting/crochet /wool baskets....

The photo doesn't do the colours justice because I found a lovely bright royal blue yarn to add to my squares and I think it makes the colours sing a little louder?!

It looks navy on my screen but I guess that's because of the screen colour set up situation....

I crocheted the squares together with the royal blue and then added a border in sc( USA) OR dc ( UK) and nice long straps also in dc.

It's lined in a fine cotton to minimise weight gain but maximise strength (and use!) as books would stretch the granny squares out of all recognition I think!

Unlined it weighs 254 grammes which means I think it took about 70-80 g of the 3 main colours and the rest in the royal blue.

I used a 4.5mm hook throughout and there's surface crochet in the centre of the shoulder straps.

The straps are 130 sts long and crocheted around on both sides of the starting chain.

I liked playing with the colours and the squares and both sides of the bag are different, one is traditional with a central focus and the other has diagonals....

I'm really looking forward to using it.