Sunday 7 March 2010

Crochet Flowers Book and Finished Cushion!

About a month ago, Anna at ARK Designs posted here about her purchase of '100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet' by Lesley Stanfield (available from Amazon here!) and her photos and recommendation and my new-found addiction to crochet led me to a hasty purchase! It came recently, and the creations inside are beautiful, take a look!



I love fuchsias; I used to like popping the flower pods open on the one in our garden (who am I kidding, I still do it now...)!




The detailing on the lavender is beautifully delicate, I reckon it'll take a few tries to get this right, but it'd be worth it!


I love how these join up in a chain, you could make a pretty garland headband from them!


There are also instructions for mistletoe and poinsettias - some handmade decorations for next year, perhaps? Ideas, ideas!


Nice and bright and ready for some sunshine!


Look at this happy fellow! There are also bumblebees and ladybirds - I can't wait to give them a try, I'd love to wear a bumblebee in my hair!


I'm not sure when I'll ever have occasion to make somebody an asparagus, but you never know!


Same with the grapes, but they'd be fun to try!

To go with my new passion, I obviously needed to buy some new wools to create with, and I found a great alternative to buying tons and tons of balls of wool (much as I'd like to, my budget and limited space restrains me, ha!) - in our local haberdashery (I know, how lucky am I, it's only about a mile away!), they sell off embroidery thread in bundles, which is perfect for making these crochet flowers with!


Not an amazing colour selection, but for £2 I couldn't really complain! Good for practising on, and the blues and greens are really pretty.


Of course I couldn't resist buying some balls of wool; this denim wool was £1, and the white wool is unbleached and un-dyed and produced in Wakefield (not far away from me, also in West Yorkshire), and I thought would make some lovely soft eco-friendly creations!

Talking of crocheted creations, I finally finished Oliver's cushion over the weekend...I say finally, but it's only taken just over two weeks (second time around...!), and I've not been working on it constantly by any means, so I guess that's not too bad! Here are some progress shots!


Getting there...this bit seemed to go on forever - crochet a few rows, measure, no, not quite there, crochet some more, ooh no not quite!


Big buttons from the haberdashery - chosen by Oliver (he'll be delighted I shared that)!


The back looks a bit podgy, but it just needs a good thump I think!


Yay! All done!

I'm really pleased with it - the ribs look really good, which is a good job since they were a pain to do! On every other row you have to turn the work to 'pull' the ribs out with your stitch, which caused a fair amount of confusion to begin with and just seemed unnecessarily time-consuming by the end, so this might be the only project with ribs! I think Oliver likes it, anyway, and he's taken it back with him so that's a good sign! Happy month-late Valentine's!

What have you been creating recently?

2 comments:

Tash said...

The flowers are sweet, especially the Lavender. Will you sew them onto things or leave them as they are?

I recently started buying this Learn to Crochet magazine, but I haven't started to crochet yet! (I keep telling myself I'm "too busy". Your blog is really inspiring, though :)

craftyjemima said...

My mum has that book - I'll be over at their house at the weekend so you've reminded me to have to have another rifle through it whilst I'm there!

Nerys x

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