The Teen's Afghan finished!

Yay, the afghan as ordered by The Teen for her new bedroom in Mumbai is done! It is looking great against an all white, minimalist background and I have to admit that the photo is a poor reflection of how scrumptious it actually is. The weather is still playing up but I decided to photograph it nonetheless the moment the sun appeared for a few minutes. I used 34 skeins of Vinnis Nikkim hand dyed 100% cotton [50 gram per ball] to create 70 squares and the edging. It is a high quality yarn, a dream to hook with and the cotton is most suitable to the climate in Mumbai which is hot and humid.

The Teen drew a quick pic of her idea of what her afghan should look like. I convinced her to trim it in off-white and she selected the full range of colours during a visit to the yarn store.

The afghan is edged in a design by the lovely Lucy from Attic24. She used it on a Granny stripe and even though it is a simple pattern to hook, the result is very pretty. 

Have a great weekend! I am nearly finished with the small hexagon handbag too and am itching to start hooking something in a more complex pattern for a change. First however, it appears that I will be hooking a bag in the Crocodile stitch, then a few coasters and doilies and finally something more complex. Cheers!

Hexagon & Granny's Soccer Ball Cushion and Handbag

The Tween's room is mostly a blank canvas of white which is spruced up with a few interesting objects among others "paintings" on raw wood that she purchases every alternate month or so from the quint Amelie Cafe in Armenian street, a favourite space of ours. Various bloggers have documented Amelie and to get an idea of this cafe where everything is recycled by the artist owners take a look here and here. 

As soon as I came across the beautiful African Flower pattern designed by two South Africans, I decided to give it a go and fell in love with the satisfaction of hooking these Grannies. The Tween and I selected the colours at random from our stash of yarn (yes, she is hooked on hooking too!) and it was great fun to see the flowers evolve. I hooked the borders of the hexagons in green and the pentagons in blue, a combination that popped all the colours beautifully and created harmony between other objects hooked in the same tropical colours. After 8 years of desert living in the Middle East we love the vibrancy that comes with living on a Tropical Island.

The "soccer ball" cushion is assembled with 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons and unfolded looks like this [you might also want to head over to Crochetbug for a tutorial on how to assemble the ball]: 

You might also want to head over to Imaging Maths to see it unfolded in a different way:

Or use this one:

The pattern for the beautiful Summer Garden Granny Squares can be found on the lovely Attic24 blog.  44 Squares were used to create the bag.

The pattern for the African Flower is illustrated and described step for step on the fabulous blog Heidibearscreative