Crafts Beautiful - Quick & Crafty - Let's Make Cards Magazine

Now - that all depends on what your working on My best advice is to try to follow a pattern (which should give you suggested yarns), but then don’t be afraid to experiment.

The crochet blanket was soft cotton DK - washable for baby. The granny squares work up with a 4mm hook and grow very fast. I’d use DK for any granny square blanket. You’ll be amazed how quickly it grows once you get going.

I’ve used some lovely Rowan chunky weight wool to make floor cushion covers, and aran for a few blankets/rugs.

For kids clothes, bags and scarves I tend to use DK if I want it to knit/hook up quickly. I’ve used some 4-ply, but it does seem to take longer.

I use the very fine weight stuff for the snowflakes and what’s called filet crochet. I like the delicate look, and am about to experiment with some very fine silk thread.

To be honest, I’m a stasher - I collect yarn from charity shops and shops and then see what I can make with it! After a few ‘follow the pattern’ bits I got much more confident about substituting thread - just remember to check the gauge if sizing is important!

I’ve used 2-ply silk as well, and that’s lovely (if expensive) to work with. There’s a lovely pattern in one of my books for an heirloom silk blanket! It’s great, I just can’t eat chocolate at the same time.

glowingsheep - 09 May 2008 03:26 PM

I just can’t eat chocolate at the same time.

A lady after my my own heart, oh how I do miss my favourite chocolate and custard creams. I re-started Slimming World last week. But didn’t really follow it as I had the kids on my own all week and couldn’t be bothered shopping. Hence the lack of chocolate and custard creams in the house I lost three and half pounds , so it shows how much chocy and CC’s I was indulging in as that was the only thing I really cut back on. Oh and I went de-caff too, true it stops the cravings.

Ramble, ramble, ramble, totally off subject again I know.

Ok granny squares. I’d like to make a granny squares blankie for Pickles. How do you add them all together are they sewn together or is there a crochet way ?

Wow! That’s excellent, well done glowingsheep!

sequin
x

Sorry for the delaying in replying - I’ve been away for the w/e

So - firstly, what would I recommend as a first project from the happy hooker?

If you’ve tried granny squares, try the one-skein scarf. This is very straight forward to follow.

Then I tried the garden scarf - a square made of crochted flowers. I made this with one skein of wool, rather than swapping colours. The flowers themselves are very pretty, and you learn how to join them together to make a scarf - which is the trickier bit.

When I joined my baby crochet blanket together, I sewed the squares together. You can join things using crochet (but there is a ‘but’). I’m doing this at the moment for a larger blanket for my Grandma. You line up the ‘loops’ along the edges and put the hook under both loops and make a slip stitch or a single crochet (or in English patterns, a double crochet).

So what’s the ‘but’? If you line up you squares with the wrong sides together, the join itself is ‘raised’ on the right side of the blanket. I’m doing Grandma’s blanket like this, as I like the effect. If you don’t want the join to be raised, you can just put the right sides together, then the raised join is on the wrong side, but there is also a ridge, not a smooth seam.

This is all described in the happy hooker, and she also has a clever way for some things where you can do this without a raised edge, which would work well for granny squares.

Hope that helps!

Glowingsheep

Oh thanks GS, I have a look in my book

I hope you had a lovely weekend away

blanket is lovely, I love to crochet, cos it’s quicker and easier, and it’s great for all the waste yarn that you might have left over to make blankets, coster’s, place mats, pot holder’s, etc and baby blanket’s

Love the blanket. I can’t wait to do some knitting and crochet now that it is winter. Far to hot here in summer.

Thats wonderful, I intermitently pull mine out of the bag, brush off the spiders and get on with it,great thing about crochet, it doesnt mind being left unlike knitting!!
Lovely colours!!xx