SIBOL again

I haven't posted on here for such a long time - not that I haven't been travelling and crocheting, but I haven't been updating the blog. In fact I've done a lot... 

Since discovering a pattern for crochet berets, I've lost count of the number I've made, most of which have been for sale on behalf of a church restoration project. I've varied the stitch and the colours, and no two of my berets have been alike. I can almost produce one hat per journey (by air) now.

In May this year we had a holiday in the USA; I knew there would be a lot of travelling involved - not only the flights, but hours of road travel too - and wanted a project which would keep me occupied but would not involve carrying several different yarns and hooks around. I decided on making a "Sophie's Universe" using a single colour of crochet cotton - I had some on a cone so wouldn't need to carry several balls around. This was a great thing to do - I've no idea what it will become when finished! but it certainly served the purpose when travelling around the USA. Sadly I've not managed to add much to it since returning to Europe so it's joined my "UFO" (unfinished object) list.

Just finished is another SIBOL blanket - this time using Tunisian crochet for the major part. This uses up yarns left over from other projects. The Tunisian stitch produces a nice, tight finish but does take longer than traditional crochet. It would be good for baby blankets though (in fact I have made one using a variety of Tunisian stitches) as the tight finish means tiny fingers won't get caught.

The longest day

Sometimes we choose a route between our two homes not because of its convenience, but because we want to make it more interesting, or visit somewhere new. Returning to the UK this time was a long route involving a local bus, a French train, two Spanish trains, a flight with Easyjet, an airport bus and shuttle, a train from Gatwick to London, and two London buses... with lunch in Port Bou, a Spanish harbour town we had previously never walked around. Before leaving, I started to crochet a ripple scarf, and thought I'd be able to record how it progressed on the various types of transport - even starting work at the bus stop!

Port Bou

The first two stages - local bus from St Jean Lasseille to Perpignan station (Dali's "Centre of the World") followed by a train to Port Bou - went very smoothly and the scarf grew. At Port Bou we made our way down from the station to the sea front, where the wind was fierce. A walk round the harbour in the bracing weather gave us an appetite for lunch, which was excellent (thanks, TripAdvisor reviewers).

From there we took the longest single stage of the journey - the slow train (over 2½ hours) all the way to Barcelona - plenty of opportunity for scarf growth! From the main station we were able to take another walk in the sunshine - this time without the wind! - before getting on to the airport train. This train is always full, and passengers are always "entertained" by buskers... but I managed to get a seat, and concentrate on the hook and yarn as the buskers passed by.

More progress was made in the airport departure lounge and on the flight (no photo possible) but the fingers had had enough by the time we landed at Gatwick. The aircraft had been directed to a domestic flight gate - which as international passengers we couldn't use - so we were then bussed around the airport, finally got through baggage reclaim and passport control, and took the shuttle to the station only to find that we'd missed the last train to London Bridge (our nearest station to home) - so by the time we had detoured via Victoria and then two London buses, we'd been travelling for 14 hours. The scarf has yet to be finished...

Out of fashion?

Amongst many things I made to sell in aid of a local church building fund were several crocheted bags - shoulder bags and shopping bags, with a few for toddlers too. Although they were admired, very few of them sold - obviously not fashionable these days! And I still have one or two crocheted but not made up - and ask myself, is there any point finishing them off if they won't sell? All the adult bags are fully lined - it's a lot of work... and the crochet cotton isn't cheap.

Best laid plans...

Last September I broke a hip so was relatively inactive (for me) for several weeks, and had to cancel a trip to France and Spain. However, the crochet hook can be quite as active at home as when travelling... The fact that one of our young friends went into hospital just as I came out - to have her first baby! - gave me the impetus to make a blanket for the newcomer, and I was thrilled shortly afterwards to receive a photo of the new baby wrapped in the blanket! It's so good to have something you've made used and appreciated...

I misread the pattern at the beginning, but it was working out well so I continued doing it my way and was pleased with the result. Later I used the same pattern - worked correctly this time! - to make a single bed size blanket in stripes. This is one which has gone to SIBOL to be given to someone in a care home. It's in a variety of colours but the base was a large cone of soft beige DK which I'd bought in a job lot. I kept making alternate stripes (two rows at a time) with the beige and contrast colours until the cone ran out, then added an edging to finish off the blanket. The single bed size would have been too big a job to be doing while travelling, so it was as well that I had to work at home on this! Well, it kept me busy anyway.

Back again... after a long, long break!

It's been nearly three years since I added to this blog! That doesn't mean my hook hasn't been busy though. I've been travelling and crocheting a lot, just not getting round to recording my efforts on the blog. So this is "catch up" time to start a record of what I've been making over the last three years.


The latest work finished was a bundle of five lap blankets for SIBOL. Two of these were made of standard "granny squares" which I made ages ago, but which were just lying in a drawer waiting to be made up into blankets:




Each square was given a matching edging in dc, then joined together using the same yarn, and given a shell edging in the same colour.

Granny squares are quite boring, though, so I looked for something a little more interesting to do, and found a square called "Sunburst" on Ravelry. This gives the effect of a circle inside a square. The first blanket I made with this pattern used yarn I had "recycled" by unpicking a blanket which had become damaged. There were four colours of yarn in this, the dominant one being a shocking pink. The other colours were a paler pink, white and cream. I put the colours together in a variety of ways then edged them all with the shocking pink, again completing the blanket with a shell edging.

These were more interesting squares to make, and I decided to make another blanket using more colours - sometimes doing every round in a different colour, some alternating the colours, some self-coloured. This was a good stashbuster design, using up lots of different yarns to try out the effect of the different colours. Some combinations looked better than others, and eventually I decided that what I liked best was when the colour combination made the circular part of the design stand out from the square around it. Again all the squares were given a matching dc edging, then joined and finished with a shell border.

The final blanket made using this pattern was done in chunky yarns, so each square was made of only five rounds of crochet, giving them the same finished size as seven rounds made with DK yarn. This meant the blanket was much quicker to make than the others - and as each square only used two colours of yarn, there was a lot less sewing-in of ends to do! A shell border didn't seem right for these heavier yarns, so I just completed the blanket with a couple of rows of dc.

Yarn cutter ... gone

The little yarn cutter I'd bought got its first outing... which turned out to be its last! I had a long journey to fill, involving coach, ferry, bus and airline travel so took a sizeable crochet project with me to occupy the hours. On the long coach journey and then the ferry I made excellent progress, and each time I changed colours the little cutter came in very handy, and was then put back into the ticket pocket of my jeans. I should have suspected something wrong when the body search at the airport didn't turn anything up but didn't think about it - it wasn't until I sat down to wait for my flight and got the crochet out again that I realised I'd lost the cutter. Spent a fruitless time searching the airport shops, hoping to find something like nail clippers - but no success. Then tried everything in my bag - surely something would have a sharp enough edge to cut through a piece of yarn? Finally I made it - one of my keys is quite new so still has sharpish edges and I managed to saw through the yarn with it. Not ideal, but at least the flight time wasn't wasted!
Anyway, my crochet hook has now added a cross-Channel ferry to its modes of transport, and Belgium to the countries where it's been used!

Much nearer home

When I started this blog about travelling crochet, I was thinking about long distance travel, not just a few miles. This evening I had to travel at rush hour through part of London... had my wool bag with me, and as the traffic was so bad that I was only moving forward one car length at a time, managed to get three rounds of a granny square done while trying to get through traffic lights. 3tr, engage 1st gear, move forward 10 ft, handbrake on, go to neutral, 1ch 3tr 2ch, back in gear... etc etc! Arrived at my destination in East London much less stressed than I would otherwise have been.