Attic24

Summer Moments {two}

☀ My current late breakfast / early lunch summer food crush. A scoop of homemade museli (oats mixed with sultanas and roasted nuts and seeds) mixed with fat free vanilla yoghurt, topped with fresh fruit (banana, strawberries, blueberries, pomegranate). It's not especially photogenic, but trust me it is soooooooo good to eat. 

☀ Enjoying the fact that we live less than ten minutes walk from the centre of town. A few times during this past week I've needed to pop to the shops, and Little Lady has jumped at the chance to come with me. In amongst the errands and shopping, we've managed to sneak a quick cappuccino/frappuccino at her favourite town centre coffee shop which has felt like a real treat.

☀ Lots of snuggling up and watching tv/films this week as the weather has been absolutely dreadful with a huge amount of rain. Happy to report that Little B's thumb has healed very well after his surgery and we are hopeful that so long as he keeps exercising, it'll keep bending as it should.

☀ With so much wet weather, we have grabbed any opportunity to get out when we've been able. This was a late evening walk up a huuuuuuge hill, taking the giddy Little People to the Rec high up above the town to burn off some energy just before bedtime. It's a lovely time of day to be out and about in summer (9.30pm in the above photo), such beautiful golden light.

☀  During the summer holidays, we manage to keep our Creative group going at Coopers Cafe on a Friday morning. I absolutely LOVE this part of my weekly routine, and it's always pure pleasure to sit down with something happily growing on my hook/needles whilst drinking a very good latte and chatting with all the lovely friendly ladies who come to join me. 

☀  My usual juggling act is well underway as I balance out the needs of the family with my own need to crack on with working commitments. I'm pretty used to blocking out the mayhem and working at the dining table, which is just as well really as I've got  a huge workload right now. I'm busy organising the big Creative Community project for Yarndale which I hope to be able to tell you about this week. I'm so excited by it!

☀  We had a few Movie Nights here last week, complete with requested bowls of the stickiest, sweetest toffee popcorn for the Little People. It's been fun - we watched {this} a few nights ago and I thoroughly enjoyed it, the humour really tickled me, and the sound track was fabulous.

☀  The morning after movie night, and the sight of the blanket-strewn sofa never fails to make me sigh with happiness. My blankets are sooooo well used here at number 24, and that makes me unbelievably happy I have to say.

☀  So. Much. Rain. Every day this week it's rained, sometimes a persistent light drizzle, sometimes short, sharp torrential downpours. I've watched the storms roll overhead and have longed for clear blue skies. I've lost count of how many mad dashes I've made out to the back yard to frantically pull in a load of almost-dry laundry at the start of yet another a rain shower. But when the blue skies appear, oh, it feels so good!

☀  A short morning walk up into the woods yesterday morning, a gentle stroll after a couple days of not being well. I felt rather drained of energy as a result of fighting off a stomach bug, but the fresh woodland air (soooo fresh after all the rain!) was a delight.

☀  The waterfalls are usually gently trickling at this time of year, but at the moment they are gushing at full force. Yes, that'll be the rain again....I'm sure there is a positive spin to put on all this wetness, but really I would love love love for it to be dry and sunny for a while.

☀ I can't deny the visual appeal of so much fresh, zesty greenery though, the woodland and surrounding countryside is absolutely thriving.

☀  I continue my love affair with nectarines, they make me so happy! Sometimes I just launch myself at a whole one (often outside as it's a juicy, messy business), and sometimes I take the time to cut the fruit up into neat slices and actually use a plate. Deeeelicious either way.

☀  A solitary little flower picked from my sparse back yard pots, so cheery and such a vivid shade of yellow....

☀  ....perfect to bring a dash of summer colour to the bathroom windowsill. 

I hope you're enjoying your days, whether you are swinging through Summer or cosying up through Winter. And I hope you manage to find some lovely moments which make you stop and take note, feel gratitude and happiness. 

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Summer Harmony Blanket :: part 5

I am beyond excited to be sharing this particular part of my Summer Harmony journey as it's the bit where these one hundred squares finally join together to become an actual blanket. I spent almost the whole of one day working out the colours for the final round, then it took me exactly three weeks to crochet and join them all. This is proving to be an amazing project to work on, and as with my previous Summer Harmony posts, I hope you don't mind if I take a little bit of time sharing my process so far?

I've really, really enjoyed taking photos as I've been working on this blanket, it's been fascinating to see how an idea that was floating around inside my head has very slowly worked it's way into reality. I've conducted many little happy dances and private squeals of excitement as I've begun to see the results of my efforts come together.....soooooo exciting I tell ya!

The above photo was taken on 3rd July - up to this point my 100 squares had been sitting in pretty piles, so this was the first time that I got to see them all laid out together.

Initially I had in mind that this would be a "random placement" type blanket, but after sharing some images on Instagram I picked up on a suggestion to try arranging them into a colourwash which ran from corner to corner. The more I thought about this "diagonal colourwash" idea the more it began to appeal to me, even though I knew it would be a major challenge to work out the colour placements. Using a join-as-you-go method has many advantages, but one thing you can't do is play around easily with the final placement as of course the crucial final colour is still missing. 

It takes a huge amount of vision and faith to work out a design like this!

The first stage was to decide on a final colour for each square. I did this by laying out all the squares on the floor, making snips of yarn (6 of each colour), then placing the yarn snips one at a time on top of a square that I thought would look good with that colour. I tried hard to make sure that each square contained 6 different colours, and managed this for the most part (98 out of 100, which isn't bad)

You can see in the above photo that at this point I took out two of the squares so that there were 100 remaining....

...I dis-guarded  these two ::

1. Saffon, Meadow, Cloud Blue, Clematis, Lavender.
2. Lipstick, Meadow, Plum, Lavender, Cloud Blue.

Then came the fun part - well this was actually the really hard part! Using the little snips of yarn placed on each square as a guide, I had to try and see the squares as if they had their final colour around them as it's this final colour that creates the colourwash effect. I had to make sure that no two colours sat next to each other, whilst trying to group the colours so that they flowed into each other. 

The above photo shows my final layout - can you see how hard it is to actually visualise the colourwash effect??! There is an awful lot of guess work and wishful thinking going on at this point!

I kept this on the floor for a few hours whilst I bobbed around doing other things, checking in on it regularly to see if anything jumped out at me. I spotted a few mistakes (same colours sitting next to each other), but eventually I decided it was time to take a leap of faith and go with it.

I decided to work the joining in horizontal rows, so joining from top to bottom / left to right. I made a working list for myself which told me which colour would be used to join each square, then piled the squares up to represent each horizontal row.

Yay!!!!!!!!!! Time to start joining!!!!!!!!

I've already written a very detailed tutorial to show the join-as-you-go method for the Harmony Square - it works beautifully well and the blanket begins to come together surprisingly quickly.

{HARMONY SQUARE JOINING TUTORIAL}

My growing blanket was often out on the dining table as I find it easier to work join-as-you-go rounds at a table rather than on my lap. Of course Tilly was involved every step of the way :)

Three rows joined.......

.....then four.....

....and onward towards the half way point.

When the weather was good, I sat outside and crocheted in my small back yard, which was especially lovely. I really wanted my Summer Harmony blanket to contain some warm, outdoor summer memories.

Six rows joined, and Little B comes outside to give me his opinion ("it looks really pretty Mummy!"), asking if his feet can go on my blog.

You can see that the colourwash effect is now looking pretty good, and I began to feel quietly optimistic about my choices. 

Working on row 9 now, and feeling the excitement growing with each new square joined. So exciting!

I know we've already had a chat about darning in ends as-you-go, but I've been asked quite a few times ot show exactly how I do this. As all rounds begin and end in the corners, it's pretty easy to darn the ends under these corner stitches. The key thing is to go back and forth in both directions which minimises the chance of the ends popping out. So in the above picture, I'm darning from right to left....

....then back again from left to right (note that my needle "splits" the yarn/stitch as it goes back across). Don't pull too tightly - you don't want to pull the corner stitches out of shape.

Then finally, back again from right to left. It takes seconds to do, and without fail I did this after every single round.

Hook : Snip : Darn. 

Every. Single. Time.

Then you can simply snip off the tail ends and they should stay securely darned under those stitches.

Ahhh, I LOVE this photo!! It's now 24th July, exactly three weeks since I started joining, and the one-hundredth final square has been crocheted in.

Woooooohoooooooooo!!

Happy Dancing is happening!!

I absolutely couldn't wait to lay it out and take a good look at it all - desperate to know if the colourwash idea worked, and whether the reality would match up to the vision I had.

Oh.

OHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I do think it worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so, so, so happy with how this turned out, I think I managed to combine "random" and "planned" to create a truly harmonious effect. A little bit quirky as so many of the colour decisions were fairly spontaneous, but the feeling of the colours sweeping across the blanket pleases me on so many levels. 

 I just love this image - J did something wizzardy on the computer and took out the background for me (which included my feet) - I know it's not square, and the top corner is curly, but ohhh......the colours! They are a little bit swoonworthy don't you think??!!

Size wise, the blanket is measuring approx 115cm square at the moment, and I've used around 45 g of each colour. I'm planning on designing and making a lovely wide border so that the finished blanket will measure around 140 cm square. 

Now I want to show you something........

I want to show you what happens when I casually ask my lovely hubby to please help me create a PDF file to document all the colour info for this blanket. I tell him I need something simple - just a table to list the six colours used in each square, and to show where each square is placed in the final layout. 

This morning he called me to come look at his computer screen to show me what he had done................

 WOWSERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do you think of that???!!!! I was absolutely blown away by this image, J really is a whizz with computer and graphic stuff, and I am thrilled with what he came up with for me.

He helped me collate all the colour info for this blanket (600 colours!), so that those of you who are making the Summer Harmony blanket along with me can now get down to the business of joining the squares.

Download Summer Harmony Part 5

So here's what you have to do to prepare for the joining round 6 ::

1. download or print a copy of the Summer Harmony Part 5 table (link above)
2. get your 5-round squares and sort them out into groups according to the 5th/outer round - there will be 6 squares in each group (excepting the Cloud Blue and Lavender which will have 5 squares). This will make it easier for you to find the squares you're looking for.
3. use the table and arrange your squares in 10 rows of 10 so that you know which order to join them in.
4. stack up your squares into piles which represent each horizontal row, number them and put them somewhere safe (the left hand square of each row should be on the top of each pile as you'll join from left to right)
5. Start with the top row (Squares 1-10) and use the Harmony Square join-as-you-go method {JOINING TUTORIAL}.

I can't tell you how much happiness this blanket has given me over the past few months - every day it has delivered a very welcome dose of summer colour and pure hooky feel-good. And now I get to work on the border (love love love making borders!), although as you can see, the blanket is already being used around here. 

Thank you as always for following along with me on my journey, I know many of you are making your own colourful harmony blankets and I hope very much that you are loving it as much as I am. Happy hooky my lovelies!

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ps here are all the links which relate to this blanket journey. I decided to create a separate page for this blanket so that all the info would be easy to find - you can find it in my left hand sidebar in my list of tutorials...

{SUMMER HARMONY BLANKET INFO PAGE}

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♥ HARMONY SQUARE PATTERN ♥

♥ HARMONY SQUARE JOINING ♥

♥ ORIGINAL ATTIC24 YARN PACK ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 1 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 2 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 3 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 4 ♥

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Moments {one}

☀ A Sunday morning walk along the damp river Wharfe at Bolton Abbey, dodging the rain showers. 

☀ Loving the abundance of wild flowers along the riverside at this time of year...I have just managed to look this one up and discovered it's called "Great Burnet" or Sanguisorba officinalis. Trying hard to commit that to memory! 

☀ I know this one is Knapweed... 

☀ ...and this one is the Common Spotted Orchid - go me! I remember looking up the names of these flowers last year,  and am thrilled that my crazy-bad memory has retained the words. 

☀ I didn't have much success photographing the beautiful grasses, but I loved observing them all the same. 

☀ We pottered around a little on the pebbly river beach... 

☀ ...finding a few more feathers for my collection (much to Tilly's delight - she has already had at them). Please also note the freshly painted nails of my resident Nail Guru - she isn't allowed to wear polish to school so it's something she really looks forward to at the start of the holidays. 

☀ I love eating fresh fruit all year round, but in the Summer I feel like my fresh-fruit cup runneth over - so many to choose from, and all so sweet and juicy. The nectarines are especially good right now - this was the plate I had for my lunch today. 

☀ Enjoying some quiet afternoon hooky, with Tilly keeping me company. She does seem to really love this blanket.

☀ A little bit of impromptu baking this afternoon, when I was hit by an almighty craving for shortbread right after my plate of summer fruit. I used a fab recipe that was shared a while back by Julia, oh this is just soooooo good!  The little cookie cutter is from Amazon {here}.

☀ Mmmmmmmm......I just love homemade shortbread, so light and melt in the mouth and buttery and zesty, you really must give it a go. 

☀ I've almost finished joining the squares on my Summer Harmony blanket this weekend, 91 done, and only 9 more to go. I'll show you how it's looking once all the joining is done, while I contemplate the business of creating a lovely wide border. 

☀ Burning this gorgeous scented candle today, as it rains steadily outside and doesn't feel very summery. The rosy smell is filling the room and making me happy.

☀ I've been resting on the sofa a little this evening, listening to the rain gently pattering against the window and the goings on of the Little People drifting down from upstairs. It shouldn't really be blanket weather in July, and yet it felt really rather good to be snuggled underneath my colourful stripes.

I hope you're having a lovely weekend, and whatever the weather I hope it feels good where you are. 

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ps  This is the first post of my "Summer Moments" - I'm going to try and capture as many little snippets of our summer holiday as I can to share here on my blog. The Little Things really are the Big Things x

 

 

Summer Harmony Blanket :: part 4

Today I'll be showing you some more of my Summer Harmony blanket progress, I can't tell you how much pleasure this blanket is bringing me every single day, I'm loving it so much! Obviously I'm enjoying the crochet a huge amount (as always) but I'm finding that the photographing and writing is just as fun as the actual making. These little squares just love the camera and are very photogenic, so I've spent rather a lot of time stacking and arranging them just so I can take photos. I'm very easily pleased, which is no bad thing.

So in Summer Harmony Part 3 I shared my colour choices for round 4, and the above photo shows you how the one hundred and two squares looked with four rounds of colour. No two squares are the same, and no two colours appear in any one square which has been quite a challenge, but in a really great way.  I have love love loved getting my eyes and heart to talk to my brain in order to create so many happy colour combos.

Round 5 will be the last round working on individual single squares before I contemplate the joining process. 

I found it easiest to take the whole thing down to floor level so that I could lay out the squares then regularly stand back from them to see how they were looking.

Interestingly, I've just had a quick look at the time stamps on the photos I took whilst doing this, and I can tell you that it took me 27 minutes to work out round 5. Not sure if this is something to celebrate, but I feel like it came together pretty quickly considering there were one hundred and two decisions (plus a kitty cat) involved!

The following photographs show the Round-5 colours chosen for each of the squares. This is just for general reference and a bit of visual fun really - there is link to an information table at the end....

Download Summer Harmony Part 4

So here's what you have to do to prepare for round 5 ::

1. download or print a copy of the Summer Harmony Part 4 table (link above)
2. lay all 17 balls out on a flat surface (floor or table)
3. get your 4-round squares and sort them out into groups according to the 4th/outer round - there will be 6 squares in each group. This will make it easier for you to find the squares you're looking for.
4. use the table (and the above photos for guidance) and place each square with the ball that you'll use to crochet round 5. There will be six squares with each ball.
5. you can then use my method of looping all six squares together with a length of yarn to indicate the colour needed for the next round (explained in part 1).
6. Get hooking!

Please take care with colours that look very similar (eg Lavender and Wisteria, also Cloud Blue and Sherbet) as it's easy to make mistakes with these colours. 

I carried on using the same method for storing my squares for this round, keeping them held together with a length of yarn to remind me which colour comes next.

I find it fascinating how the look of each square changes once another colour is added into the mix, it's such an emotional process somehow, and I really love that you get used to "feeling" the colours rather than just seeing them.

I confess I didn't put a tremendous amount of effort into all these colour-coded decisions - it honestly seems to work out better if there isn't too much over-thinking. It's my best kind of fun, and I am really quite addicted to colour-play like this.

So that's round 5 done and dusted, and oh those stacks are looking mighty fine, if I do say so myself.

The next round (round 6) will be the final round and will include the joining process where I begin to turn these beautiful piles of squares into an actual blanket. I can tell you that working out how to organise the colours for round 6 took me waaaaaaaaay longer than 27 minutes. It was the best part of a day, and at this time I still don't quite know if I managed to get it right or not.....................I'll give you an update very soon I promise.

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♥ HARMONY SQUARE PATTERN ♥

♥ ORIGINAL ATTIC24 YARN PACK ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 1 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 2 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 3 ♥

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Today Looked Like This

A journey west to reach the coast...

Morning coffee sat at the end of the old pier...

The very huge beach at St Annes, on a most glorious Monday July morning...

J and I, enjoying a few precious child-free hours ambling about on the beach...

Paddling our toes amongst the teeny fishes swimming in the shallow pools...

The light was fantastic, so bright and sharp and crystal clear...

And there was just the right amount of sea breeze whipping across the open beach to keep us cool.

Such a beautiful day, I came home to the Little People with shells in my pocket and sand still on my toes, full of summer spirit and salty sea breezes.

Later.....7pm.....and the day still held so much summer warmth and light....

I walked out with Little Lady, purely to feel the sun still warm on my face...

Along the canal with it's beautiful still water...

Stopping to drink in the reflections under this old bridge, just as I always do...

Little Lady, full of life and chatter, as happy as I was to be out walking at this end of the day...

Up into the cool shade of the woodland, where the sun danced through the greenery...

Along the little lane, stopping to chat to the chickens and admire the castle view...

Then onwards down the hill and gently back towards home.

Summer days like these, so beautiful in their simplicity. Warmth and love, sunshine and light, chatter and laughter, sea breezes and dappled cool greenery. Fresh Italian coffee, ripe juicy nectarines. Sitting and walking and paddling and strolling and completely loving the here and now. Today was all kinds of wonderful.

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Early July

These sweet days of mid summer are just beautiful, and I feel like I need to soak up every tiny little summery thing and absorb it right into my soul. I feel a strong desire to stock pile these visual details, preserve the sights, sounds and memories of summertime in preparation for Autumn when it all fades away. My view is so green and lush right now, and every day I stand at the end of my street and breathe in the sight of it, even in the grey mist/rain that we've had of late it looks lovely. 

On Saturday morning I walked through the park with the Little People to visit our rather fabulous farm shop. It was a lovely day and we were on a mission to choose and buy some things to put a picnic tea together, it was such fun seeing what they chose and how they thought our picnic should be. We came home with a full bag - pork and apple sausage rolls, garlic stuffed olives, Italian salami, cherry tomatoes on the vine, fresh crusty bread, eggs to hard boil, a punnet of strawberries, chocolate chip cookies. J wasn't particularly keen on the picnic-in-the-park idea, but I showed him the chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and reminded him that all he had to do was sit on a blanket, eat yummy food from a plastic plate and drink wine from a plastic glass. What's not to like? Besides, the Little People were sooooooooo happy about the idea of picnicking, he didn't stand a chance really. 

It was lovely, with that particular quality of summery light when the day starts to gently fade and early evening creeps in. It was round 8pm in the above photo, Little Lady and I lazing on the picnic blanket at the top of the hill chatting about this and that, whilst J and Little B ran round after a football. 

We found a new place to walk at the start of the month, a little bit of an accidental discovery. We were driving around familiar lanes in the Yorkshire Dales (J and I, one Monday lunch time) looking for somewhere quiet and scenic to enjoy a bit of a picnic lunch. We had food and drink, I had my crochet, he had his Kindle, and we had in mind that we might spend a few hours partaking in some pleasurable idling with a view. We saw a sign for Grimwith Reservoir and on whim J swung the car off the road and up a teeny lane to take a look. Turns out that it's rather picturesque and has 4 mile footpath running around the whole perimeter. So just like that we abandoned the idea of hooking/reading and took off to walk instead. I happened to be wearing flip flops at the time, and as I always feel like I could happily walk miles in them I decided to give it a go - turns out that I did just fine.

The following Saturday we went back to the same place, this time with the Little People. They moaned a little and said it was boring (four miles translates to just under 2 hours with Little Feet) but you can't win them all can you? On the plus side, I found some gorgeous pheasant feathers and indulged in my summer grass fixation. Very lovely grasses grow plentifully around Grimwith, in case you are ever in the area and fancy checking it out!

Talking of grasses, I discovered the beautiful work of artist Hannah Nunn just recently - do go and feast you eyes on her blog and have a look at her stunning photographs of summer grasses {here}.

The clouds were pretty spectacular on that day.....

.....ganging up on the horizon and looking rather spooky and unreal (these are Lenticular clouds which we see quite often up on the hilltops here in Yorkshire)

I added the pheasant feathers to my mug on the mantel, which doubles up as a nifty kitty amusement device. I'm sure you can picture the scene - she is very adept at extracting individual feathers which she carries proudly around the room as if she hunted them down in the wild. 

We are devouring punnets of strawberries at the moment (well not right at this very moment as I've run out), we eat these ripe sweet fruits on homemade museli for breakfast, with lunch, after dinner and many times in between. Interestingly, if I were to offer up a lowly apple as an after dinner Pudding Option, the Little People would look at me as if I'd grown two heads. But if I present a plate of chopped strawberries, they descend like locusts and forget to be disgusted that I've given them fruit for pudding instead of something "proper".  Works a treat, every time. Some of the fruits we are getting are massive, and can easily please three children.

Not a lot happening in the vicinity of the back yard just now as I keep forgetting to water the pots. I've got some slightly wilting herbs and some rather leggy lavender plants which are hanging on in there, but my best success at the moment is the clematis which is flowering really well this year.

I love the colour of the petals against the blue of the sky....

....and I'm enjoy a few blooms on my table too.

Isn't lavender just so very summery? I do love it for that.

This past week has seen quite a bit of rain fall here in my patch - I'm NOT complaining (my peas are happy! And the countryside is lush!), but it has made flip-flop wearing a real no-no. There have been pretty rain droplets caught in the Alchemilla leaves though, which never fails to delight me every year.

Awwwwww Tilly, you sweet and naughty little kitty cat! She is soooooo exasperating at times, so deliberately attention seeking and Diva-ish, but I love her ways all the same. My Summer Harmony blanket is growing so beautifully and I fall a little deeper for it's colourful charms every day. More on that journey soon.

My Daffodil socks are coming on nicely too and I'm loving the very stripyness of them. The yarn is inspired by the daffodil emblem used by the Marie Curie charity - more details here.

This picture is to remind me that amongst the Summer sunshine and picnics, the colourful yarn and flowers, the ambling walks and jaunts, there has also been quite a bit of quiet stay-home recovery time for us just lately. On Thursday last week, Little B went back into hospital to have another operation on his hand. He had his first op back in November 2015 which was partially successful in that his left thumb was fine and dandy but his right thumb refused to be fixed first time. It's been tricky for him at school during this past year as he's right handed, but we are hopeful that the operation has worked OK this time, fingers (and thumbs) crossed. It's not always easy doing this parenting thing, and I admit I've felt the strain of it this past week.

Thank goodness for yarn and crochet - total feel-good therapy and stress relief right there in that bag.

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Summer Harmony Blanket :: part 3

It's been quite a while since I made any cute little piles of granny squares (probably my original Harmony blanket back in 2015), and I have found myself swooning at the sight of them as they fly off my hook. There is something so uplifting about these dinky little stacks of yarny colour, and the hours I've spent creating them have been especially lovely.

This is always a tricky time of year for me (last year I pretty much fell off my  Attic24 planet in June/July), where I am constantly fighting a rather heavy, blanketing kind of tiredness. I'm pretty sure this is to do with my hay fever - I do take antihistamines but always end up feeling incredibly sleepy and discombobulated. And clumsy too, which has it's own downfalls (I've managed to burn myself twice during the past week in stupid ways, honestly, who drops a red hot iron on their own arm??).

So my writing skillz at this time of year are a bit below par as a result of the aforementioned discombobulation and blanket-of-fatigue, but thank heavens I can crochet these little squares with my eyes half closed. Yippeeeee for that rather glorious fact! What I'm trying to say in a round about way is {{sorry}} for the slowness of these Summer Harmony progress reports, I'm trying to keep up as best as I can.

Today I'm sharing an update which is all about Round 4 - this round is where the squares begin to look and feel very much more square-like which is rather satisfying. I'm still making my colour decisions in the same way as as I did for previous rounds, by playing with the squares and arranging them according to what makes me feel happy. There is no real method as such, and I still haven't really got any idea at this point how the squares are going to work as a blanket, but I'm hopeful it's going to be a little bit spectacular. 

I've really enjoyed taking photos of my working process for this blanket, I am fascinated by the way in which makers design and create, and hope you might enjoy this insight into my methods! The following photographs show the Round-4 colours chosen for each of the squares. This is just for general reference and a bit of visual fun really - there is link to an information table at the end....

Download Summer harmony Part 3

So here's what you have to do to prepare for round 4 ::

1. download or print a copy of the Summer harmony Part 3 table (link above)
2. lay all 17 balls out on a flat surface (floor or table)
3. get your 3-round squares and sort them out into groups according to the 3rd/outer round - there will be 6 squares in each group. This will make it easier for you to find the squares you're looking for.
4. use the table (and the above photos for guidance) and place each square with the ball that you'll use to crochet round 4. There will be six squares with each ball.
5. you can then use my method of looping all six squares together with a length of yarn to indicate the colour needed for the next round (explained in part 1).
6. Get hooking!

Please take care with colours that look very similar (eg Lavender and Wisteria, also Cloud Blue and Sherbet) as it's easy to make mistakes with these colours. 

And this is what they look like once Round 4 has been added, aren't they just so delicious looking?! At the time of writing this, I'm already on with the Round 6/joining (soooooooo exciting!), so I'll try and publish Part 4 very soon for those who are joining me in making this blanket.

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♥ HARMONY SQUARE PATTERN ♥

♥ ORIGINAL ATTIC24 YARN PACK ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 1 ♥

♥ SUMMER HARMONY PART 2 ♥

 

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Sock Update :: Hers and His

It's been five months since my last sock update, and in that time I've had three pairs on and off my needles. This first pair ended up being quite a long time in the making, given that they presented me with a fair few knitty challenges and took some lengthy stints in the Naughty Corner. 

I started these socks back in early February I think, using Christine's Easy Cable Sock pattern combined with her fabulously helpful YouTube tutorials. I loved getting to grips with the cables, and I am super-proud of myself for sticking with them even when they made me want to pull my hair out at times.

Ditto the "crossed rib stitch heel" which I found quite hard going (even harder than the twisty cables). I think this stitch looks really amazing, but don't think I would ever be tempted to try it again unless I was paid a squillion pounds to do so.

I spent over two months challenging my brain and fingers with these socks, and there was a ridiculous amount of pulling back and re-knitting that went on at one point. But finally, that second toe was done and my Cable Socks were complete......

..............................ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE how the gentle gradient colour changes of of this particular sock yarn shows off the cable pattern....and look, I even managed a pretty good colour match. This yarn is from the Stylecraft Head Over Heels range ::

{Stylecraft Head Over Heels : Eiger colourway}

All in all, I'm really rather chuffed with these beauties!

And here we have a pair of GREY socks in progress..... no, of course these aren't for me - you can't imagine for one minute that I would choose to knit socks for my own feet in multiple shades of grey? Nah, it's never gonna happen. 

This next pair came about after J executed a prolonged and dedicated campaign for his very own pair of Man Socks. I admit I felt secretly elated that he wanted me to knit him some socks as he doesn't usually show very much interest in the things I make with yarn.

We had quite the job agreeing on which yarn to use - I point blank refused to make all black/grey socks and J made plenty of disgusted sounds when I showed him stripes, even if the stripes were dark. In the end we reached a compromise and settled on this Opal yarn in shades of grey which satisfied my need for a bit of colour tonal variation, but obeyed the stripes-over-my-dead-body rule. There are eight shades to choose from in the Opal Classics range and it pleased me on some childish level that this colour way is named Elegant. Ha!

{Opal Classics : Elegant colourway}

This yarn was especially lovely to knit with I have to say, despite the lack of colour. It's really soft and smooth and glides beautifully over the needles....and those plain non-twisty rows were such a pleasure after the last pair of naughty-complicated socks. The other advantage of using this yarn is that there is no need to do any stripe matching, not that I don't enjoy that particular challenge, but sometimes it's just rather nice to get stuck straight in and go for it.

J has size 10 feet against my size 5/6, but it didn't make a huge difference to the pattern really. I simply cast on 64 instead of 60, and elongated the foot by working 52 rows. I drew round J's foot on a piece of paper and used it as a guide to help me get the foot length right, and he tells me they are a really good, comfortable fit. Funny thing was, as soon as the first sock was off the needles he insisted on wearing it, so spent a few evenings with just one sock on "trying it out" which made me laugh.

Spurred on by my Man Sock success, I showed J the Opal Classic choices again and asked him to pick a second colourway. He ummed and ahhhed, almost went for "Luxurious" but in the end surprised me by choosing this one.

{Opal Classics : Exclusive colourway}

I worried a little about the Exclusive choice to be honest - the socks came out quite a bit more stripy than the ball of yarn suggested, and although I loved knitting them I thought that those bright flashes of red and yellow might be too much for him to want around his ankles.

Soooooooo.............. do you think these look like Man Socks? I'm not convinced, but J says he likes them and will certainly wear them tucked way inside his boots and under his jeans, so I'm calling it another success story. 

I would love to hear from any of you who've had Man Sock success - what yarn choices have you gone for? And please don't tell me Black or Grey with coloured heels or toes, cos that just won't be happening on my needles any time ever.

Now then, whilst we're chatting about all things sockilicious, I want to jig your memory and remind you about the oh-so-fabulous Yarndale Sock line that I help organise with my lovely friend Christine, AKA the Queen of Socks. The sock line will be running for a third year at Yarndale in September  so if you wish to join in and make a pair of socks which will be gifted to those in need of a "woolly hug", you can find all the details {HERE}. Last year's sock line was a huge success with over one hundred pairs donated - you can find links to the supported charities and write up's of the previous years {HERE}

Of course, I am proud to work with Christine on this charity project, although to be fair, she does all the work and I'm just the mail lady who gets to oooooh and ahhhh at the visual gloriousness of it all. But......as I did last year, I will certainly be doing my little bit and knitting up a pair of socks to donate, how could I not? I've read the letters and shared in the emotional impact of this endeavor and know just how wonderful it feels to be a part of this generous and kind hearted woolly community. 

SO, do you want to see my yarn?

It's a thing of beauty, let me tell you!

I'm going to be using this ball of beautiful West Yorkshire Spinners yarn which has been produced as a special limited edition colourway to support the Marie Curie charity. As you may know, Marie Curie have the daffodil as their emblem and this yarn has been designed so that the stripes knit up to represent rows of daffodils......awwww!!! I can't tell you how much I love that idea - daffodil socks, how cool is that?!

And while we're here thinking about this beautiful ball of yarn that I'm squishing, please can we just pause and take a teensy moment to appreciate the fact that I'm showing you my fingernails.....I'm so proud of my nails! They are growing! 

Ok, back to the yarn............

The very best thing about buying a ball of daffodil inspired yarn is this - with EVERY ball sold, a whopping £2 will be donated to Marie Curie. You can find this yarn exclusively online at CityKnits if you wish to knit up your very own daffie socks whilst supporting a really worthy cause.

I am sooooo excited to cast these on - the closing date for receiving socks for the Yarndale charity sockline is Saturday 26th August. All details (including labels to print and address to send) is {HERE}.

Right.......where're my needles?

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ps part 3 of my Summer Harmony blanket will be here in the next few days for those who are joining me x