Attic24

Springfrost Blanket :: Introduction

Good morning!! If by any chance you've come to the Attic looking for the new Springfrost yarn pack, click on the following link to go straight there :

♥ SPRINGFROST YARN PACK ♥

I always really look forward to these posts where I introduce you to a new blanket because it means I can finally share what's been taking up so much space in my head of late. It's a huge relief for me actually as I'm a very open person when it comes to creativity and I find it really, really hard keeping things under wraps. So ((yay)) for today, when I can spill the creative beans!

Most of you probably already know about my annual crochet-along (CAL) which takes place at the start of January every year - this will be my ninth CAL blanket. Last year I wrote a blog post about all my crochet along blankets, so if you'd like to see what previous years have looked like, that post is ((here)). If you are new to the Attic and are wondering what on earth I'm going on about, I'll give more specific details about how the CAL works at the end of this post.

The idea for this colour palette started to form back in March when I was working on my Winter Garland. Do you remember it? The garland was a collection of crochet flowers and leaves in soft, muted winter shades with a touch of spring warmth and I fell head over heels in love with the colours.

As you know, I'm hugely inspired by nature and the seasons, and although I'm a summer-loving soul I can always find the beauty in every season and every type of weather (well, mostly. Drizzle and low cloud is a challenge). 

I actually love the winter months when temperatures fall below zero and we have a heavy frost, it can be incredibly beautiful and inspiring.

Here in Atticland our winters are very long. Take the above photo for example - May this year and even though the spring flowers were blooming we were still getting hard winter frosts. It remained soooooo cold with nights falling below zero and it felt like Spring never really had much of a chance to get going this year. It was very pretty out there, but brrrrrrrr, not really what you would expect spring to feel like.

Because our spring arrives very late, the arrival of the first early flowers is a real cause for celebration. Snowdrops are the first, bravely showing up in February when the weather is still doing crazy winter things. 

Then we look forward to the very early blossom. You can see in the above photo that sometimes these sweet little flowers have to brave a bit of snow and ice, but they don't seem to mind.

Early spring blossom is just the loveliest thing, so delicate and uplifting, it never fails to make me happy.

The colours of the land and sky at this time of year are amazingly  beautiful. The freezing cold weather covers the grass in sparkly frost and the morning sun glows soft and golden.

The early morning skies are often tinged with pink, and I really enjoy getting outside to walk and breathe it all in.

I hope from my photographs that you can get a feeling for how this colour palette came together in my mind. I began to imagine pale pinks, soft blues and frosty greens, with an undertone of cool white and silvery grey. A blend of winter and spring when the weather is still oh-so-cold but nature is gifting us the first flowers of the changing season. It's a quietly joyful colour palette, celebrating the first signs of spring after a long, cold winter.

As with all my colour palettes, I do a huge amount of faffing and deliberation when putting together a collection of colours which will eventually become a blanket. It's a lengthy design process for me, but it's one of my most favourite things to do. Quite simply, I get a massive amount of joy from creating with colour, oooodles of happiness!

The Springfrost colour palette is obviously much paler than my usual choices (it couldn't be more different from last year's Harbour palette) but I love the sweet gentleness of it. You might also be amused to know that this is the very first time I've ever used white in a blanket, and I'm mostly over the internal struggle of it (! if you know, you know !)

As is usual for my blankets, I've chose fifteen shades of Stylecraft Special DK for my Springfrost blanket

Top row :

♥ Lincoln ♥  Duck Egg ♥  White ♥  A Hint of Silver ♥  Mushroom ♥

Middle row :

♥ Pistachio ♥ Spearmint ♥ Blue Marl* ♥ Parma Violet ♥ Powder Pink ♥

Bottom row :

♥ Meadow ♥ Cloud Blue ♥  Baby Blue* ♥ Wisteria ♥ Pale Rose ♥

You can find the Springfrost yarn pack in my shop at Wool Warehouse, click on the following link...

♥ SPRINGFROST YARN PACK ♥

* a little note about two of the colours I've chosen - on the left is Baby Blue, and on the right is Blue Marl. You might not be familiar with these shades as they are from the Stylecraft "Special for Babies" range. This yarn is compatible with the usual Special DK and crochets up in exactly the same way....and for this particular colour palette, the pale wintry shades are absolute perfection.

During the course of the past four months or so, I've been working on stitch pattern ideas for the Springfrost blanket. Endless samples have flown off my hook, ideas worked and re-worked, tweaked, frogged, modified and abandoned. When I sample stitch ideas, I don't look in books or at patterns that already exist (well very rarely) - my method is to sit with my hook and "doodle" with the yarn to see what comes up. Sometimes I might have an idea of something already in my head, other times I start with a basic stitch that I already know and attempt to grow it into something new. It's a fun process, a bit frustrating perhaps, but with my years of design experience I know that if I just keep going, eventually something will bloom and feel just right.

I deliberately keep my patterns simple because one of my true passions in life is to inspire crochet beginners to embark on a blanket journey. I use the most basic of stitches, put together in a way that creates something interesting but also very easy to learn and create. For those who are experienced hooksters, my stripe patterns gift you with a whole load of mindful therapy - you're welcome! Personally, I love love love to get lost in a stitch pattern, to allow my mind to quiet while my hands work familiar, repetitive, rhythmic stitches. Absolute bliss.

The Springfrost stripe is a very simple two row repeat which is easy to learn (prefect for beginners) and is worked using UK treble crochet. The resulting surface texture is absolutely delicious - just look at those soft, pouffy, bobbly, squishy lines! This blanket feels beautifully cosy and I can tell you that it's almost impossible to resist stroking it.

Of course I'm reaaaally excited for this crochet-a-long, it's such a lovely thing to look forward to in the New Year once the sparkle of Christmas is behind us. Just a reminder that there is no need to sign up for this CAL - it's all very relaxed here in the Attic so all you need to do is gather your yarn together and join in when the free pattern is released on 6th January.

It's just over seven weeks until the CAL starts so there is a bit of a wait for the pattern, but here is a quick round-up of information for you :

♥ The Attic24 SPRINGFROST CAL will will run for 8 weeks in total, beginning on Friday 6th January - that'll be the day when the pattern will be published here on my blog and I'll give you all the information you need to get started. I'll then give weekly updates every Friday throughout January and February 2023 so that we can make the most of weekend hooky time.

♥ There will be a full picture tutorial here on my blog for the new Springfrost stripe pattern. Weeks 1-6 I'll share the colour order for a set of stripes (around 18 each week). Week 7 will be a catch-up week (darn in those ends!), and the final week 8 will be all about the border.

♥ The SPRINGFROST YARN PACK contains 15 x 100g balls of Stylecraft Special DK and is enough to make one blanket/throw. The blanket will measure approx. 120cm x 175cm. You will need two packs if you wish to make a larger/double bed size blanket. I'll give starting chain/pattern guidance for those of you wishing to make larger (or smaller) blankets. This colour palette and stitch pattern would make beautiful baby blankets, so you could definitely make two of those from one yarn pack if you wished.

♥ There is no printed pattern included in this pack, all pattern info will be here on my blog, with updates every Friday throughout January and February 2023. 

♥ All CAL instalments (pattern and colour info) will remain FREE on my blog into the future so that it's there for you to access at a time that suits you. You don't have to squeeze your blanket journey into 8 weeks if you don't want to - take your time and work at your own pace.

♥ Something I often get asked - can you use your own colours, or use one of my other yarn packs and still join in with the CAL? The answer is YES, of course you can! I appreciate that many of you will probably already have yarn that you want to make use of, and I really look forward to seeing your creativity with stash busting. Perhaps you may not care for these soft pastel shades and want to use one of my brighter colour packs instead, and that's absolutely fine too.

All in all, you've probably guessed that this is a relaxed crochet-along project and the main aim is for us all to enjoy crocheting together. It's such a lovely way to start the New Year, and I hope you'll look forward to it as much as I do.

Before I go, I just want to say how grateful I am for my continued partnership with the lovely folks at Wool Warehouse, they really are fabulous. We've been working together since 2014 and they are just the loveliest people, a true family business who genuinely care about their customers. And for full transparency, I do receive a commission for every Attic24 yarn pack sold through Wool Warehouse, so thank you ever so much for your support, I appreciate it more than I can say.

Well I think that's about all for now, and I hope these soft, pretty colours have inspired you to plan a new blanket journey with me.....roll on January!!

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♥ SPRINGFROST YARN PACK ♥

 

 

 

Carcassonne Crochet Retreat :: Part 2

A few weeks ago I posted a blog all about my recent crochet retreat in the south of France (the post is ((here)) if you missed it), and I really enjoyed sharing the project that I designed and taught to the guests during our week away. We stayed in a really lovely four star hotel right in the heart of the old walled city of Carcassonne, and the week was a perfect mix of crochet and leisure time, and of time spent indoors and outdoors. Four days of the week we were based in the hotel retreating with our yarn and hooks, and two days were spent out and about on organised excursions.

Carcassonne is a very, very very old medieval town and there is much to learn about the life and history of a place that spans across many centuries. 

The history is more than a little bit mind blowing - in fact, Carcassonne has about 2,500 years of it and has been occupied in different ages by Romans, Visigoths and Crusaders. It's a walled citadel built high up on a hill, and you can see in the above photo that it's constructed with two sets of stone walls. 

The outer walls and towers are incredibly well preserved to say how ancient the town is, and over the years there has been a fair bit of restoration carried out to keep it in such good condition.

The walls are around 3 kilometres in length with 52 huge towers, and this is about the only thing I can remember from the ninety minute guided tour we had of Carcassonne.  We had a wonderful young French lady tell us all about it and she was extremely good at explaining the intricate layers of history that surround a place this ancient. It's just that my memory doesn't really hold onto that depth of information any more, but if you are at all interested, then Wikipedia can fill you in.

I just loved being there to soak in the ambience, and to appreciate how lucky I was to see such a famous and historical town with my own eyes.

There are four entrance gates which allow you to pass through the impressive stone walls and enter the old town inside. On the morning that we arrived, our coach dropped us outside the walls, and we walked through the main gate (pictured above) to reach our hotel - I'll never forget the >>wow<< that I felt seeing the old streets for the first time.

It was almost impossible to photograph our hotel because the streets were all very narrow and the buildings tall, but you can see part of it in the above photo on the right hand side. It was a gift staying in such a central location (I think there are only two hotels inside the walls), and at every opportunity I spent time walking around and soaking in the atmosphere.

The above photo shows the main square which was just a few minutes walk from our hotel, and the place where we went most days to eat lunch (and dinner too). Oh my goodness, it was such a pleasure! I mentioned in my first post that we were exceptionally lucky with the weather and during early October we were treated to temperatures in the high twenties. Imagine that?! For this sun-loving soul living in the cool north of England, this kind of sunny warm weather is the stuff of my dreams.

I can tell you that I really, really enjoyed my food in France. Lunches were a relaxed, leisurely affair and I especially enjoyed eating outside in the sunshine with a cheeky little glass of chilled rosé wine to help things along. A had some amazing salads (hello, warm melty goats cheese) but I think my two favourite and most memorable lunches were the above French onion soup (it tasted absolutely incredible, and I had it twice)....

....and snails! I've eaten snails before, many years ago in Paris when I was on a student art trip, and they are an interesting thing to put in one's mouth. In all honesty, I think perhaps I enjoyed mopping up the melted garlic and herb butter with my crusty bread a little bit more than the actual snails themselves, but it was a wonderful culinary experience for sure.

Carcassonne is an extremely popular tourist destination and I can imagine that in the height of the summer season it would be insanely busy. In fact, that's just reminded me of something else I remember from our guided tour - the numbers. Apparently there are only 47 residents living within the old city walls, but the town receives almost three MiLLioN visitors every year. That's rather a lot, isn't it?!

Luckily for me, October was a perfect month to be there and it was possible to really enjoy the unique atmosphere of the old streets without the crowds.

I absolutely loved walking around the streets - I abandoned my map pretty early on when I realised that I actually couldn't follow it (I kept getting lost no matter how hard I tried). 

I discovered that it was more fun to just meander along random streets, turning corners here and there and allowing myself to relax into the "lost" feeling. Eventually I would end up either back where I started (quite literally walking in circles), or popping out between buildings and suddenly recognising where I was.

On the day of our guided historical tour, we decided to leave the high old walls behind and descend down to the lower and newer part of Carcassonne. It took about half an hour to walk....

....and we discovered that the new town was just as delightful and full of character as the old town.

We arrived just as the morning market was coming to a close which was a bit of a shame as we only caught glimpses of a few stalls....

....but it was as beautiful as you would expect.

The lower part of Carcassonne has a huge town square complete with a fountain and a multitude of places to eat and drink. I find this sunny outdoor lifestyle so appealing and enjoyable, and at times I felt like I was existing inside a film or a travel brochure. It was pleasure overload!

It was a stunning afternoon (around 28 degrees I think) and the walk back was slow and hot. We crossed over the wide river....

....then began the slow climb back up the hill to the old walls. It was lovely though, very scenic and a really nice balance to the rather intense days of indoor crochet concentration.

Our second day of excursions took us by coach to another beautiful medieval town called Mirepoix.

There was no agenda here, just the opportunity to spend some hours pootling and enjoying the place.

I'm not really much of a shopper (although I do quite like browsing), but many of the guests really enjoyed all the little independent boutique shops here in Mirepoix. All along the ground floor underneath the arches there was a mixture of shops and cafés...

....lots of things to see and tempt you to part with your Euros.

I am much more of an outdoor tourist and would rather spend my time looking at trees and buildings and views than the inside of shops.

Mirepoix had some very beautiful and picturesque streets...

....and some delightful refreshment opportunities too.

I enjoyed a morning coffee, and then later on....

...a really incredible hot chocolate. You see that glass full of whipped cream?

Yup, alllllllll that cream went into my hot chocolate and it was possibly one of the richest, sweetest and most indulgent drinks I've ever experienced.

In the afternoon we were taken to another small town to visit a textile museum - this was mostly focussed on natural dyes, spinning and weaving techniques. It was interesting to learn about the importance of textiles in the region and see some of the very early spinning and weaving machines in action. 

There were many times during the week when we really enjoyed the beautiful little walled garden at the hotel. It was such a peaceful oasis and a lovely place to spend time.

Often we would find ourselves drawn there in the lull before heading out for our evening meal, enjoying the last of the sun and the company of lovely crochet friends.

I have to be honest and say that as much as I really loved teaching and being a part of the group, it was quite an intense experience and usually by the time 5 o'clock rolled around I was ready for a recharge. I would often head out by myself at this time to soak up the beauty of Carcassonne...

....and I think these quiet, early evening strolls were some of my favourite times.

It was impossible not to fall in love with Carcassonne, it was just so ridiculously beautiful!

I found that by the end of the week I really, really didn't want to leave. 

I loved being somewhere that was so unique and picturesque and I absolutely LOVED the dry, sunny, golden warmth. I mean, of course I'm sure I would have enjoyed it in dull grey weather too, but the gift of a hot, blue-sky week in October was appreciated so very much. Did I mention that I didn't want to come home?

After seven wonderful days I had no choice but to get on that plane and fly north back to England, and look, we brought the sunshine with us! London looked amazing from the air and although I still had some long hours of travel ahead, I was full of gratitude for the week I'd spent in France.

Well, I really hope you've enjoyed seeing a little more of my French trip - I've tried hard not to waffle too much and believe me when I tell you I'm only showing you a fraction of the photos I took. Haha - you've had a lucky escape!

The retreat was organised by Stitchtopia craft holidays which is part of a much larger travel company, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Everything is very well organised and each group is led by an experienced tour manager so you feel very well looked after. 

Hopefully very soon I'll be able to share news of my 2023 crochet retreat, it's exciting to think that I've got something so lovely and pleasurable to look forward to next year. A week of sunshiny crochet and beautiful views? Yes please!

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x Carcassonne retreat post : part 1 x

 

 

 

Friday

Hi all

Just testing out a blog post, to see if my photos load - Typepad has really been in bother this past week and I admit I've been both frustrated and worried. This is the first time it looks like it might be working again for me - please could you leave me a quick comment below, so I can see that it's all working - thank you so so much for your patience, and hopefully I can write some more to you over the weekend xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Typepad Issues

Morning my lovelies

It's Tuesday morning here in rainy North Yorkshire and I'm hoping this little bit of text reaches you. I just wanted to let you know that Typepad is having some issues and I'm so sorry to those of you who are trying to access patterns, or who simply want to see my photos. All Typepad blogs are suffering after a scheduled technical update at the weekend did not go well, so all we can do is wait it out I'm afraid.

Keep all your digits crossed!

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