Showing posts with label poncho. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poncho. Show all posts

Friday, 29 May 2015

Ta-dah! Sunday Poncho!

For such a long time I've been drooling over Alia Bland's Sunday Shawl pattern

But... I just can't wear shawls. They always fall off my shoulders, forwards backwards and sideways, and I spend my whole life rearranging the shawl that I'm wearing.

I decided that for our Great Ocean Road Trip (post and photos coming soon), I wanted to make something for myself, and what a great opportunity to convert this gorgeous shawl pattern into a poncho! I took advantage of the Drops sale and got a small mountain of Drops Cotton Merino, a beautiful DK yarn that is 50% cotton and 50% merino wool. So happy to find woollen yarn that doesn't make me itch like crazy! My excellent sister-in-law helped me to pick the colours :) 

After discussions with my mother and my favourite crochet ladies on Facebook, I decided on a 3 corner poncho. There was much mathematics (even a pencil and paper came out at one point, and the printed pattern is all scribbled with little charts and counting numbers), much frogging (and a little bit of swearing), but finally it's done! All the details on the changes that I made to the pattern are on my Ravelry Project Page.

Ta-dah! My Sunday Poncho :D  








It's so warm and snuggly, but not too warm, and is very comfortable to wear around the house and sitting in my crochet chair. I am wearing it right now! 

And of course, if I was getting a poncho then Captain Poprocks needed one for himself :P 



Saturday, 14 February 2015

Cowl Neck Poncho Love!

Hello you all!

Guess who is sick (again)? Ugh, I think I have had enough colds this winter to last for a couple of years... That is the reason I look so sickish on the pic below! Somehow I can't get my immune system back on its feet. Any tips to fix that?

Anyway, after some weeks without much crochet, I got my crochet motivation back :-) You probably saw the cowl neck poncho on quite a few blogs by now. It seems to be "the" thing to have as a crochet-addicted person at the moment. The pattern was published in the Issue 25 from Simply Crochet and is quite easy to follow. 



I used the yarn suggested (Drops Nepal) but in different colours. As you know I am a huge fan of the Drops yarn and I wasn't disappointed with Nepal! It is very lovely to work with and nice to the skin. I used goldenrod, deep red, navy blue and off white as colours. I wasn't sure about the goldenrod at first but it turned out fine in the end. Phew!

The original pattern starts with a very long chain. I am no big fan of chain starts as they usually turn out a bit wobbly and I tend to miscount (which results in a lot of frogging). So I started with a foundation chain which turned out perfectly. Man, I am in love with foundation chains since Michelle introduced them to me in this post!

 The original pattern calls for 16 rows of granny stitches but when I was done with these, my poncho was farrr too short. So I added more rows. In the end I did 28 rows which turned out the perfect size for me. 



I was going to do the fringe the pattern called for until I saw Lucy's version and went for that. I still like the fringes but I was a bit scared it would tangle up to easily. 

Can't wait to wear it in public/to work!

What are you working on at the moment? 

Take care
Anne

P.S. More Work In Progress pictures can be found on our Instagram account. I haven't yet figured out how to download these pictures yet...

Sunday, 8 February 2015

A Weekend in my Home Town

Hello you lot!

I am finally on the way to get my life back on track and thus I get to write a blog post again. January has been tough on me and my family and I hope this month will be better. I got some crochet done but life was mostly just surviving. I am at my parents' place at the moment which is nice.


Weyhe is the town I grew up in and the place Michelle spent her year abroad. No big surprise that it's also the place where Michelle and I met. Back then I lived in a different part of the town/village but my parents moved some years ago and now their house is just a couple of meters away from Michelle's first host family's house. This part of Weyhe is called Sudweyhe and it probably the most village-y part. Right after my parents' street, fields start - which is why I got to capture pictures of the sunrise on Friday.




My days here were filled to the brim - I reckon that is a normal thing when you return to your hometown after some time for a visit. I saw some friends which was great (I wish we could see each other more often!) and attended my sisters bachelor thesis defence. She did great and while she is still waiting for her mark, I am 110% sure she passed! Very proud of her!


I was able to sneak some crochet in though. My poncho is growing! As you can see, I am using different colours than the original pattern. The fourth colour will be a dark yellow. Looking forward to see it finished! Fingers crossed that (now that my life seems to be getting back on track) I will be faster with my crochet stuff again!


How did you spend your weekend?


Take care
Anne

P.S. We love reading your comments - thank you so much for them! :-) You should see Michelle and my conversations on Facebook about it! There is a lot of squealing about every new comment involved... :D

Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Poncho and Super Fast Zpagetti Container

Hello there!


A couple of weeks ago I showed a red lump which should be my poncho at some point... Well, it is not a WIP-project anymore!




I more or less followed this pattern. None of my stitch count matches up with the pattern because I used a different yarn. So in the end I only used the pattern for the general idea and the size.



The poncho is very soft and I love wearing it. It tends to leave little red fluff thingies everywhere though but I don't mind much. What I like best about the poncho is the cowl-neck. Keeps me warm and feels so nice.

The overall yarn cost was rather high but worth it. I have some left overs and so I am thinking about making matching wrist warmers or a hat. We'll see.

The last weeks have been incredible busy, so there wasn't much time or energy for hooky-plays. I did however whip up a Zpagetti basket last night because I needed a tin for my hooks. And yes... I have a lot of them. Why? I tend to loose the 3.5,4.0 and 4.5 hooks and it's cheaper to buy a whole set than individual needles. Opps.



The basket is so easy and it takes like no time to make.

Super Fast Zpagetti Container

Pattern

Start with a magic circle.

Rd 1: 8 sc in the circle. Close with a sl stich.
Rd 2: Chain one, 2 sc in every stich. Close with a sl stich.
Rd 3: Chain one, [1 sc in the next stich, 2 sc in the next] x  8 times. Close with a sl stich.
Rd 4: Sc in the back loop of every stich around.
Rd 5: Chain one. Sc in ever stich around. Do not close but continue working in spiral.
Rd 6-8: Sc in every stich (in spiral!). 
Finish with a sl stich.


Anyway, I need to go to work!

Take care everyone!

~ Anne ~

Sunday, 2 February 2014

Crochet Fun! New blanket, poncho and toddler shoes WIP! Also Burg Hohensyburg...

Hello there!

I wanted to post for some time but a cold and then a bladder infection knocked me out (still fighting with the latter... YUCK). Wish me luck that no other sickness will come after this one! :P

Crochet... 

For christmas I got the Stylecraft Special DK color set. It is the set of colors Lucy from Attic24 used for her granny stripes blanket. Like Michelle I am part of the Creative Crochet Crew on Facebook and for month people have been gushing about the Special DK yarn and so after month of looking at it longingly I asked for a set for Christmas... Well, let's say: I understand the gushing now. Of course it is acrylic yarn and not as lovely as merino or something like that buuutt it is brilliant to work with. It just glides over the fingers. My favorite color by far is pomegranate (I need to keep myself from drooling over it), but there are 16 other nice colors in the pack too.

I got my parcel early January and spent some days planing and wondering what I might make with it. So many ideas! So many possiblities! Oh, oh, the choices...

In the end, I decided to go for the corner to corner blanket pattern from Red Heart Yarns. In the CCC group everyone was talking about it and as you can see in previous posts, Michelle is quite a fan too. The tutorial is a bit though to understand at first but with the help of this youtube video I mastered the art of the Corner to Corner!

It's not finished yet but I am already on the "making it shrink" part. So far I made three rows of each color two times ( = 102 rows in total) with a 4,5 mm hook and will go back the same way. As you might guess my blanket will be square . I spent some time thinking about a retangular one but in the end I wanted to spend the yarn evenly. I hope there will be enough yarn but so far it looks good. I put some yarn balls on a scale and each of them still has 50 gramms at least. Therefore my chance to finish the blanket with the one color pack looks good! Cross your fingers!



NOTE: The finished blanket can be found in this post!

Earlier the week a good friend's little girl turned one. She (= her mum) asked for crochet shoes for her birthday and thus I am busy making some pairs. Unfortunatly I didn't managed to finish them in time for her birthday (I spent most of last week sick in bed) but I hope both mum and birthday girl will like them anyway.

Some weeks ago I came across a lovely pattern for baby boat shoes from the blog Whistle and Ivy and saved it right away. Lucky me that I got to use it so soon!

My shoes doesn't look like a shoe yet but it's getting there... What do you think of the colors?



I am also working on a poncho for myself. I got a voucher for yarn from my work mates for my birthday last year and I spent it on some really lovely yarn. It's called lana grossa garzato baby alpaka. So soft and fluffy! Doesn't look like a poncho yet but getting there:



Walking...



Over the last weeks winter came to Germany. Well, Germany except Dortmund that is. While most of the country had snow, we had rain. Eeekk. I would have loved to see some snow but it seems it’s not in the picture for us this year. We did however have a lovely winter day today, that is sun and almost cold temperatures (8 ° C) and so the boyfriend and I decided to take a walk.

We drove to Burg (Castle) Hohensyburg. The castle itself lies in ruins but the view from up there is quite stunning. Take a look! Definitely worth walking about there! When the walking path aren’t that muddy and slippery anymore, we plan to walk around the forest there. Perhaps even up to the castle starting down at the river. It’s the river Ruhr by the way. The Ruhr flows past my work place as well. So pretty! I will take some pictures in spring to show you.
 











The first signs of spring! Can you believe it?! It’s so early in the year!



Cooking and drinking...



At least the bladder infections gives me a reason to drink a lot of tea. Something I should do anyway… We got this pretty tea pot for Christmas. It’s brilliant! It has a very large tea strainer which leaves the tea floating around and the flavour comes out amazingly well. We got another three brands of loose tea from Tee Geschwender yesterday since we ran out. Yum. I prefer to buy tea in little local tea shops and not from chains shops but I haven’t found a nice little shop here.




The post man also delivered this chalk board this week. We intend to plan out meals out more, so we don’t have to go shopping as often. This board shall help us and it looks pretty in the living room. We have an open kitchen, so everything I buy should somehow look nice in the living room as well. I am always open for new recipes, so if you have ideas for some meals that are quick ( = for work days) and healthy at the same time, I would love a hint! I am thinking about baking breakfast muffins and freeze them. Has any of you done that yet?




That's pen is liquid ink by the way. An thing from my teaching days...

Take care,
Anne