The Family Patch

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Catch-Up)

Wow, it has been far too long since I wrote a post about my Nine Months Of... Crochet Challenge and I do apologise!

I have had a lot of things going on, not least of which being offered the role of Volunteer Co-ordinator for Pregnancy Sickness Support, the charity for which I am raising funds through this campaign. So that is a very exciting development! But it has meant that between the new job and all my other usual commitments, I just haven't had time to make a proper update. 

But I have found time to crochet, so my challenge is still going strong. The baby beanie pattern is still in the testing phase (and needs the odd adjustment) but it is getting there. And the baby blanket is growing nicely. I love how the colour of the outermost row of stitches can affect the entire look of the blanket...

Here is it with a dark edge

And here it is with a lighter coloured edge.

I'm thinking a darker edge will be best when I reach the final row, but what do you think?

Once this is finished I may make a few smaller items again, just to increase my total number of items made. But I'm sure I'll be back to making another blanket soon, because it is just so easy to work on these once you've got the pattern going and I often find myself picking it up whilst watching TV (something I cannot do with an item that requires sizing and counting of stitches!)

I also can't help but dream about the things I want to do after I've used up the donated yarn from Black Sheep Wools. I have a couple of donated gift cards to spend and I keep having a sneaky look at the yarns available - I'm liking the idea of a bright colour scheme next!

It's exciting, dreaming about future projects and I cannot wait to share my ideas and makes with you over the remaining months in this challenge.

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Week 7)

This week I decided I would work on an old pattern I made when I was pregnant.

These are the hats I made from the pattern...

I knew even at the time that the stitches were a bit loose and "gape-y" but I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong...

Of course now I know I used a hook at least 3 sizes too big for the yarn (what was I thinking?) and so after lots of failed attempts to get it right, I finally figured out how to get the pattern to create the right sized hats using the correct size of hook.

This happened, thanks to my "crochet guru" Jen sending me a link to her fabulous blog post on creating a beanie to fit any sized head! You can check it out on her blog. Seriously, go check it out!

The only problem is, I now cannot get the heart motif to look quite right.

Here is my first attempt...

It's not bad, but it's not what I classically associate with a cute heart motif.

So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this design...

Only I forgot that a double crochet stitch (or treble crochet stitch if you're using UK terms) is longer than it is wide and so what works on squared paper doesn't quite work in reality!

*sigh*

But good old Jen came back with the idea of using excel to plot my designs, that way I can try and adjust the squares so they are longer than they are wide just like the stitches... how cool is she?

I really want to perfect this pattern but it is quite frankly becoming a real challenge. So actual progress on the crochet front in terms of having items to sell is not that great this week. But hopefully this pattern will bring in a few donations once it is perfected. And as I shall need to make a couple of hats to check the pattern actually works (once I get it right, that is) there will be a couple of them for the auction.

What do you think, would you donate to the fundraising team if you followed a pattern like this?

 

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Week 6)

So this week I decided I would try something a little different. 

I decided that it was high time I pulled out my wire and beads and had a go at crocheting a piece of jewellery.

I have crocheted necklaces before but always followed a suggested pattern. This time I made it up as I went along, using tiny little pink seed beads and attaching one to every single stitch in the chain. I made two chains and twisted them together and came up with a delicate little necklace I am calling "Pretty in Pink".

It is longer than I meant it to be and perhaps not as "heavy" as it needed to be to hang down as well as the previous necklaces I made with larger beads and more strands of wire, but it is still a very pretty necklace. Perfect for a new mum, don't you think?

The "official" bits this week aren't really official at all. I don't actually know how much wire I used or what make the seed beads were (they just came out of my stash). I just know I used 0.315mm silver plated copper wire, a variety of pink seed beads, and a 1.7mm steel crochet hook. There is no pattern, just to long strands of beads crocheted into a a row of chain stitches and then twisted together and completed with a simple silver-plated clasp. 

I've had quite a productive week this week to be honest as I also managed to add a further 5 rows to my blanket. I have no idea how long I was crocheting as I sat and worked on that whilst watching a film with TJ and lost track of time. But it's all adding up to a gorgeous blanket for someone...

I'm loving the interplay of the colours and the randomness of it (even if I do occasionally start a row in one colour and decide to undo it and start with a different colour that looks better!)

Don't forget you can follow the other lovely ladies taking on their own fundraising challenges over on the official Nine Months Of blog :)

 

 

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Week 5)

This is just a quick update as I seem to have gone down with yet another stomach bug (which as most HG survivors will tell you generally brings on a cold sweat as the memories of being sick flood over you!) But I can't let another day go by without a crochet update...

This past week has seen me spending a couple of hours working on the blanket, building upon the rows I reworked last week. I managed to add a couple more rows only as progress was slow due to other commitments and not feeling 100%. But it is slowly growing and I am having fun trying to decide which colour I should choose for each row.

I'll be back next week with a much better update, I promise! And until then, why not pop over to the official Nine Months Of blog and see what the whole team has been up to.

Related articles

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Week 4)

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Week 3)

9 Months Of...(Crochet): Raising Funds for Pregnancy Sickness Support

9 Months Of... Crochet (Weeks 1 & 2)

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Week 4)

Well, week 4 has been an interesting one!

I found a blanket pattern I wanted to try with the donated yarn from Black Sheep Wools and chose out the colour scheme, picked up my hook and crocheted away for a couple of hours over a couple of days to make good headway. Because, after all, blankets are big projects and although spending 10 minutes each day is enough to finish a small item or two each week, it won't get you far with a blanket!

I was pleased with the progress... except it was ruching around the edges and getting worse with every new row I added. What started as something which could be forced relatively flat with some persuasion...

grew quickly into something which would not lay flat no matter how much cajoling I tried!

It may have been pretty and the colours may have been working beautifully together, but the pattern just wasn't working for me somehow.

I turned to my trusty "crochet guru", Jen, who is a font of all knowledge when it comes to crochet. It was Jen who suggested the pattern on Ravelry and without even being asked the direct question she knew what I needed to know by one quick look at my photo!

So, I quickly chose to frog it (this means take it apart/unravel some rows - hopefully you won't hear me use that term too many times over the next nine months) and start again. Sometimes, however hard it is to frog it, it is worth doing for the end result.

With Jen's wise words in my mind (start with 10 stitches instead of 12 and try a smaller hook) I began again on Saturday. And despite feeling pretty rough and sleeping most of Saturday afternoon, I still managed to make up the same number of rows over the weekend. And it is looking so much better.

What do you think?

 

So, obviously this item is not going to be completed within a week's time frame, but I'm guessing you all want the details? Well here goes...

The "official" stuff

The pattern used is the Rainbow Ripple Baby Blanket by Celeste Young who can also be found at Celeste Young Designs.

As stated above, I have adapted the pattern somewhat. I am using DK yarn (see below) instead of worsted/aran weight and whilst I started with the recommended 4mm hook for this yarn I am now using a 3.75mm hook. I also began my first round with 10 stitches instead of 12, leaving me with a 10 pointed star instead of a 12 pointed star, but one which lays much flatter.

The pattern itself is magnificent and so easy to follow, it's just for some reason or another it simply didn't suit me (or I didn't suit it). As Jen pointed out, I could choose to either spend hours trying to make my technique work for the pattern or I could adjust the pattern to suit my technique and be done with it. Guess which one I chose!

Anyway, the yarn I am using is Sublime Baby Cotton Kapok DK which is deliciously soft and so lovely to work with. It is currently on offer at Black Sheep Wools if you'd like to buy some to try.

And so that's where I leave you this week, dear readers! I am off to crochet away at my blanket whilst the boy is still enjoying his afternoon nap :)

Don't forget to pop by the Nine Months Of... Blog and check out what the rest of the team has been up to!

Nine Months Of... Crochet (Week 3)

I must apologise... I am a couple of days late posting this update. But I have been away for the weekend, meeting up with friends I haven't seen in far too long, meeting my new baby niece and taking Little Man for his first trip to the seaside. So I have missed a lot and have a lot to catch up on...

So without further ado, here is what I have been up to this week!

Item 4 - lady's sun hat

This was meant to be a child's stripy hat that I could turn into a dinosaur hat. And when I looked at the pattern I did wonder about using a 5mm hook and increasing for so many rows at the beginning, but I just followed the pattern and it ended up large enough to fit me. So I am now improvising a wide brim to turn it into a lady's sun hat.

The moral of this week is that I should really learn to trust my instincts! I have made enough hats to have a good idea of what works for me and what doesn't. But all is not lost... my sister already has her beady eyes on this one.

The "official" stuff

The pattern for the hat is the Crochet Dinosaur Hat by Rachel Mackin who blogs at Fizz Pop Bang Bang.

The yarn I used was Wondersoft Pearl DK by Stylecraft which you may remember was left over from a blanket for my new niece. I would guess there was around 70-80g of each colour left and I have used most of it on this hat. I shall share the completed image next week!

Item 5 - May Roses

These are again incomplete as I haven't had chance to stitch them together. You can see the rose on the left shows how it is crocheted to begin with and the rose on the right is roughly how it will look when stitched into a spiral. I have yet to decide whether to use these as a decoration for the hat or as a brooch or pretty hairpin...

The "official" stuff

The pattern used for these roses is May Roses by Lucy of Attic24 (you'll be seeing a lot of patterns from her over the coming months as I absolutely adore Lucy's work!)

The yarn used was Wondersoft Pearl DK by Stylecraft for the pale rose, and I think Rico Baby DK for the darker rose (although it may have been Rico Baby Cotton Soft DK as I bought both a while back and forgot to note which was which). The amount of yarn used for these roses is tiny, so a perfect pattern to try with those little bits of yarn you have left over.

 

So that's two new items added to my collection, although they need finishing off this week. I spent around 80-90 minutes this week, mostly at the beginning of the week as I knew I would be unlikely to have chance to sit down for my allotted 10 minutes each day over the weekend and so upped my hours early on to compensate. 

This week I also received my yarn donation from Black Sheep Wools and so I shall be working out which patterns to use those with and what to spend my £25 gift card on too. So stay tuned!

 

9 Months Of... Crochet (Weeks 1 & 2)

So, unlike the rest of the gang who are waiting for the official launch day of 8th August, I started early on my challenge and am now at the end of week 2. How can it be two weeks already? 

My aim is to try and give you all a weekly update, with photos of anything I have been working on and information on the yarns and patterns used. So here is a group shot of the items I've been working on these past two weeks.

 

Please excuse the quality of these photos... I finished stitching items together this evening and wanted to make sure the post was published before the weekend was out, as week 3 begins tomorrow (Monday) so I had to take them in artificial light...

 I have to admit that although I have reached my quote of a minimum of 10 minutes every day (or 70 minutes per week) I have struggled to do much more the past week or so. I have been so busy with preparation (such as choosing patterns and updating my blog to showcase the project) that my free time has been eaten into very quickly. Now that the preparation is mostly over though I should hopefully get more time to work on the actual crochet (which is, of course, the fun bit!)

So my first few projects have been pretty small and easy to work up to ensure I felt I was making progress even though time was short. 

Item 1 (I shall number all my items so I can keep track of how many are made throughout the challenge) - Granny Bunny

 

I had to improvise with the eyes and they didn't quite come out right, so I shall be fiddling with them this week to try and improve them!

He (or she) doesn't have a name yet and I don't even know whether I'll be able to officially include him in my challenge. I had hoped to make plenty of little toys to sell but became aware halfway through his creation that there is a law here in the UK that any handmade toys sold have to be tested. And I can't afford to get anything I made tested. I almost gave up on him there and then, but I realised that even if he couldn't be sold, he could become a sort of "mascot" for the project. But he needs a name. Do you have any suggestions?

The "official" stuff

The rabbit crochet pattern is the Easy Easter Bunny by Janette Williams. I found the pattern on ravelry and then followed the link through to Janette's blog, The Green Dragonfly. 

The yarn I used was Wondersoft Pearl DK from Stylecraft, which is one of the few acrylic yarns I can use and was left over from a baby blanket I made for my "sister" who gave birth this week to a beautiful baby girl. I didn't think to actually work out how much yarn was used, it really was just scraps! 

Item 2 - Toddler Handbag

 

This little handbag was a super easy (though surprisingly time consuming) make. I've been used to working granny squares recently and so working an item out of single crochet (or double crochet if you're using UK terms which actually confuse me) seemed to take much longer somehow.

The "official" stuff

This sweet little bag is made following the pattern Little Miss Two by Sharon Maher and is available as a free ravelry download. 

It was also made out of scraps from the Wondersoft Pearl DK. I had almost a full ball each of the pink, green, yellow and brown shades and a tiny bit of white left, so I wanted to get as many items as possible out of it.

Again I have no idea how long it took or how much yarn I used but I shall try and make note of this in future!

Item 3 - Baby Flower Hat 

 

This little hat was so quick and easy to make up. It required less counting of stitch increases than the baby hats I have made in the past and seems to work up pretty well. I think I still prefer the hexie hat style of pattern but this was still a fun make.

The "official" stuff

So this hat is made to a pattern called Winter Lady baby girl hat and is available on the blog The Veggie Mama.

You've guessed it, the yarn used for this hat was also Wondersoft Pearl DK :) and again I have no idea how much I used.

 

So that's it... my first two weeks has led to the creation of 3 items. I am quite chuffed with that and am looking forward to getting my teeth into some larger projects once the autumn and winter months arrive and I am spending more time curled up on the sofa of an evening!

Check back next week to see what else I have made, and do share any patterns you think I should try! 

Feeling Overwhelmed With Gratitude (Donations from Black Sheep Wools & Anonymous Supporters!)

I don't even know quite how to begin this post, such is the intensity of my emotion today. As the title so aptly says, I have been overwhelmed with gratitude for the enormous generosity and support towards my 9 Months of Crochet Fundraising Challenge over the past couple of days. And I need to take the time to say a massive THANK YOU to both Black Sheep Wools and a very special customer of theirs who donated to my yarn fund anonymously. 

It all started last week when I was feeling like it was an enormous task to fund this project. Yarn can be pretty expensive and I was worried my passion for creating as many items as possible would be severely limited by my ability to fund the yarn needed. A chat with a friend, however, gave me renewed hope that there would be a way and I contacted Black Sheep Wools to find out how their wishlist system works and whether they might be willing to offer a charity discount...

Forward a few days to Wednesday this week and I received an amazing email from Lesley at Black Sheep Wools to inform me that they would be happy to make a donation to my fund and help promote my challenge via their social media. I called her and had a lovely chat and Thursday morning saw me finding a link to this photo of the gorgeous yarn donation they were sending me...

Photo courtesy of Black Sheep Wools

That's 30 balls of yarn, people! THIRTY!! And all in a cotton DK which is what I was desperately looking for (I have eczema on my hands and so struggle with wool blends). To say I was overwhelmed with gratitude is an understatement. I actually couldn't sit still I was so excited and when I called my mum to tell her I couldn't even speak properly. This generous donation is more than I could have hoped for and it means that I can actually plan a baby blanket or two, something I had dreamed of doing but doubted I'd have the means to make reality.

But it didn't stop there... oh no! Black Sheep Wools posted about my challenge on their Facebook page and Twitter feed and later that day I received another email from Lesley to inform me that a customer had called to donate a £25 gift card to help me buy even more yarn for my challenge. That's right, someone I don't know read my blog and out of sheer kindness rang up and bought me a £25 gift card! It arrived today and I have been informed by Heather and Lesley at Black Sheep Wools that this anonymous supporter will be reading my blog to follow my progress. So to you, my amazingly kind supporter, I thank you from the very bottom of my heart! 

To say I shed a few tears yesterday is an understatement! My phone didn't stop beeping all afternoon with friends retweeting and commenting on the posts about such generosity. Pregnancy Sickness Support is a small charity with such big aims and the very fact that people out there read about what we are doing and feel compassion in their hearts to support us makes the world of difference. We are run almost entirely by volunteers and rely heavily on donations as we get no formal funding. The volunteers are, of course, deeply passionate about raising awareness and funds (that's why we're all doing our individual "9 Months Of..." challenges after all!) but to know others out there are rooting for us gives us such an amazing boost.

And so this thank you is not just from me but from everyone who will benefit from the funds and awareness raised by all this support!

If nothing else, this past couple of days has made me realise just how much of a community there is out there. Which has made me more determined to blog as much as I can about what I am doing. I have added a countdown to my sidebar so you can keep up with how many days I have left. And I shall be posting weekly updates (at a weekend hopefully) with photos of what I have managed to create that week. I shall try and keep note of how many hours I have spent and how much yarn has been used. And I shall be sure to let any of my supporters know which projects their yarn has been used for.

My promise to you all is to make this challenge as exciting to follow as it is to complete. And to do that I shall be trying to involve you as much as I can. I am making a shortlist of patterns I wish to attempt, but I may have to ask you which ones you prefer (should I use my donated yarn for this blanket or that one). And I am hoping to get some photo step-by-step tutorials of the basic crochet stitches on to the blog at some point in case you wish to have a go yourself.

Until then, you may wish to have a quick look at the crochet video tutorials I created for an iVillage series last year (chain stitch & double crochet, mastering the tension square, treble crochet) and a non-video post explaining crochet patterns. My photo tutorials will be heavily influenced by things I learned when filming those. 

And check back over the weekend for the update from weeks 1 & 2 of my 9 Months of Crochet Challenge! It includes some of this...

 

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9 Months Of...(Crochet): Raising Funds for Pregnancy Sickness Support

And So It Begins - My 9 Months Of Crochet Challenge

And So It Begins - My 9 Months Of Crochet Challenge

The title says it all, really! If you don't know what I'm talking about, please look here. 

I started my "9 Months Of" challenge on Monday 15th July 2013, so that my 9 months (or rather 40 weeks, as the whole pregnancy thing goes) will end on 21st April 2014 leaving me plenty of time to photograph and list all the items I have made for sale.

I haven't set myself a specific target in terms of how many items I wish to create for the auction, but I do know that I want to have a good selection so that as many people as possible will bid and help raise funds for Pregnancy Sickness Support. This means that I shall not be attempting any larger items (such as baby blankets) to begin with as I want to keep this manageable. I will start by using up my scraps of yarn to make toys, hats, bags etc and then if I find I am making good progress I may add a blanket or two into the mix. I just don't want to start with a blanket and it take so much time I don't have many items to sell at the end of it all.

I have set myself the target of spending at least minutes of time crocheting every day for PSS. This is because if I have a busy day or am feeling rough I can easily add those 10 minutes on to the next day. But it is by no means a limit... if I have a free afternoon or evening you can be sure I shall be crocheting more than 10 minutes! 

I may also crochet the odd item for personal gifts throughout the next 9 months, but they will be made in addition to my minimum 10 minutes for PSS each day and any yarn left over from personal projects will be added to the stash for charity items. So it's a win-win situation, right?

What I do need to say here though is that this project means my blogging is going to take a whole new direction. I want to document my progress on here and whilst I shall still write posts about our home and life, crochet will become a bigger focus than it has been previously. And I'm okay with that. But it does mean that I am having to make some serious decisions about the time I spend blogging and therefore also the time I spend reading blogs...

I need to focus on those which will inspire me to keep at this project. I need to read the blogs by crafters and people who are passionate about charity. So I'm afraid to say that my blog reader is going to have some major changes made to it. I don't want to lose all the links I have made, but I do need to prioritise. Just this past week I had over 600 unread posts because I hadn't found time to log in and read. That is just too many. So I'm sorry if I suddenly stop commenting on your blog as frequently or even reading it as often, but I feel the time has come to make that change. If I don't, I'll waste precious crochet time on trying to keep up...

And I know that ultimately changing the focus of my blog in this way will change my readership too. So if you do wish to follow my progress, you might be interested in also taking a quick peek at my "Inspiration Board" on Pinterest. I certainly won't have time to make everything, but it is a great place to find ideas!

All that's left to say is thank you for your support and that I hope you enjoy coming on this journey with me :)

 

 

 

9 Months Of...(Crochet): Raising Funds for Pregnancy Sickness Support

I think I may have forgotten to properly mention that I was heading to the annual conference for Pregnancy Sickness Support (PSS) last weekend (bad blogger!) so I'll just say that I went, it was amazing, and I came home thoroughly enthused about the work PSS is doing and has plans to do. 

It's been a crazy week since coming back in which I sent off my first ever proper proposal for the book and joined the Social Media Team for PSS which included my first ever Google+ Hangout (as a participant that is). But there's something even more exciting I want to blog about today...

At the conference we bounced around the idea of a "9 months of..." campaign to try and raise funds for PSS. The idea behind this is that people set themselves a task that they will do for 9 months (the length of a pregnancy) and then ask people to sponsor them to do it. That way we can raise both funds and awareness as we continue to do our individual "9 months of..." things, hopefully ending in May to coincide with next year's International Hyperemesis Gravidarum Awareness Day.

I thought it was a fantastic idea but could not think of anything I could do that I would feel comfortable asking sponsorship for. I do not have the energy to do anything like a certain amount of walking/cycling/swimming etc each month. But what I can do is crochet...

Now, I'm not going to ask people to sponsor me to crochet. That just seems a bit mad! But what I am thinking of doing is a "9 months of crochet" project so that next May I have a bundle of handmade items to auction off to raise funds for PSS. It will be different to this year's eBay auction, but it may still bring help me raise more than I could than by trying to find an activity I can be sponsored for. 

I am still working out the details (I need to start in August) but it is an exciting prospect. I am probably going to be asking people to help me buy the yarn I need to complete this task - yarn is expensive so instead of asking for sponsorship I thought I might ask people to "buy me a ball of yarn". And I know I shall certainly be blogging about my progress throughout the year. But other than that I am still very much in the "ideas phase".

I am wondering how I will fit it all in, but actually if I set myself the task of spending a minimum amount of time per day on crocheting I should be able to achieve a fair amount by the end of the 9 months. I'm thinking 10 minutes per day is an achievable amount, which can be increased on quieter days or passed on to the following day if I am totally run off my feet or feeling rough. 

I did a fair bit of crochet in the later weeks of my pregnancy, when I was feeling relatively 'normal' but too exhausted to do much else. I became quite addicted to it to be honest but haven't had as much time to enjoy it since Little Man was born. So it seems like quite a personally apt challenge to give myself. 

It may, of course, scupper my plans to make as many handmade Christmas presents as possible for this year, but it's a worthy cause!

I'd love to know what you all think... have you done something similar? Do you fancy joining me in this? What kind of patterns do you think I should try - blankets and hats or more adventurous things like toys and jewellery?