State of Hexcitement

Hello, today let me introduce you to my new love, the Hexagon Blanket. In one of my earlier posts I mentioned being inspired by Lucy of Attic24 to make the Hexie. So off I went to my LYS to get my yarn. I left my home with visions of the beautiful colours that Lucy used and wanted to get similar colours.

But when I reached the store the colours available were not as lovely and the quality of the yarn was not too great either. So after turning the whole store inside out, these are the colours I bought.

There are 21 colours in all. Yarn in India is almost always available in skeins. They are then wound into balls by hand using the age-old custom of wrapping the skeins across your knees or a chair back.

Here is my yarn, duly wound.

Hmm... these balls of yarn don't look hand wound, do they? So how did I do it? Well, that is a secret I will reveal in a later post (and no, it is not what you are thinking).

Now on to the actual making of the blanket. I wanted each hexagon to be unique and that the colour combinations should not get repeated. So I sat down with my two bags of yarn and a 4mm crochet hook.

Firstly I chose a colour for the centre at random, then I went about in an eeny-meeny-miny-moe fashion to choose the next colour and so on. You see, I wanted "unique" hexagons.

After hours of painstaking labour, this is what I achieved.

Then I chanced upon this brilliant tip by Angie who has a lovely blog called "Le monde de Sucrette". She starts out by making the centres in each of the colours, which are 21 in my case. Then she moves on to the next round using a different colour every time. Absolutely brilliant. This gives you unique motifs each time and all the colours are used equally and your work progresses much faster. To see this tip in detail go here. On the same page she has a different pattern for the hexagon, which you may like to use.

This is how I started off. I was now making good progress.

The next pic shows how far I have reached now.

Here is close up of the blanket. Looks rustic, doesn't it?

And a couple of more photos, with and without the flash.

Mwah.. I just love this blanket. I will keep you posted about my progress with my blanket.

A big thank you to Lucy and Angie for the pattern and the tip.

Check out my latest hexagon blanket and get my free pattern HERE.
Happy crocheting!

Been to knitaly?

"knitaly" isn't that a very apt name for a knitting blog.? It is also the place where I found this beautiful pattern for a crochet cell phone cozy and best of all is that she has very kindly given instructions in English too.

This is my cell-cozy. I think it looks pretty much like hers, don't you?

Now to find a green dress to match my cell cozy...ha ha.

See you later.

Table manners

Doilies are definitely a thing of beauty and a joy forever... Over the years I have made dozens of doilies. I find it just magical that a simple ball of thread can end up looking so intricate, exquisite, delicate and of course elegant. Oh yes... I do love doilies (or did you guess as much from my last post!).

But, once in a way I like to keep pretty aside and go for for something that is practical, something that is useful. This Table Napkin Holder is the result of one such trip down the Utility road. I had seen some pretty napkin holders on various blogs (not sure whether they are Spanish or Portuguese), but could not find a suitable pattern in English. So I decided to just make it up as I go along.

And, my dearies this is what I made.

The cream and brown colour were chosen to match our dining table. I used knitting cotton  and a 2.5 mm hook. Once it was completed I felt it looked quite plain, so thought of adding some flowers on top.

I wanted an "elegant" spray but these flowers were all I could manage before my patience ran out.

Do you think the flowers match the napkin holder? Please let me know. Maybe next time I will make different flowers and use different colours.

Here is a close-up of the flowers.

Now isn't that something pretty and handy to have on your dining table.

See you later. Do feed my fish at the bottom of this page.
Love xxx