Current Colour Inspirations:

- Travels to romantic Paris and Istanbul
-  The fabulous tones featured on the delicious Désaccord blog
- The "For Me" section on my Raw Rustic Pinterest boards

I created these mood boards and then went shopping for interesting yarn

Photos of my "to die for" yarn purchases to follow later

xxx

Pinterest Raw Rustic

Pinterest: Raw Rustic

Pinterest: Raw Rustic

Delphine Cowl

Pattern: Delphine by Amanda Perkins from her book Desirable Crochet Motifs, Volume 1, 2008 to 2010 available on Ravelry

Yarn: Vinnis Serina in colour Storm

Hooksize: 3,75 mm

I hooked 14 flowers to create a lightweight cowl for Spring/Autumn weather

 Hello!  A thunderstorm is rolling in and I am feeling happy since I just love rainy seasons and it has been unseasonably hot and dry until now.  I will therefore wrap up this posting since we live in an area that also suffers from severe electrical storms.  We have had to surge protect all our appliances after we donated a few wi-fi modems to the weather last year, phew!! I am off to the kitchen now - we are eating Singapore Laksa tonight yum.  I am looking forward to enjoying a craft beer whilst cooking up a storm - pun intended ;-)

Have a great week, I am back to hooking my triangles after a splurge at the yarn store earlier today - yay!  See you soon again xxxx

Raw Rustic Cotton and Bamboo Throw!

Good Morning from a sunny Mother Africa!  The Throw that I have been working on for a while ('cause I ran out of yarn and so did my supplier) is finally finished - well that is apart from the weaving in of ends that is still happening . . .  It is such a soft, beautiful throw and I enjoyed every minute of the process from selecting the colours to deciding upon the appropriate hook sizes, joining methods and edging. I have made about 4 different postings about this project over the past weeks and attach the links below where appropriate. 

Pattern: 

The 70 squares are hooked in HDC

Ring: Ch5, close with ss. 

Row 1: Ch2 to form first stitch and then another 15hdc. Close round with ss. 

Rows 2-5: Ch2 to form first stitch and then 1hdc, 1ch, 2hdc (this is the first corner). Rest of the 3 corners 2hdc, 1ch, 2hdc. For the rest of the stitches between the corners: 1hdc in each. 

Repeat until there are 5 rounds in total.

See my posting On the Hook! where I blogged about the idea and stitches

Yarn:

 hand-dyed cotton, bamboo and cotton-bamboo mix

See my posting titled Wabi Sabi for more about inspiration for projects and yarn choices

Joining Method

I absolutely fell in love with the joining method I used for this throw.  I will be writing more about the method in another posting and will also refer you to a YouTube tutorial by someone else that thoroughly showcases this easy but visually appealing method. 

At first I was interested in joining the squares via the flat braid method, but I realised that the method was not suitable to a highly textured yarn.

Edging

I tried out a lattice edge in two different sizes - 3 chains as well as with 5 chain lattice but discarded the effort as I felt a simple edging would be more suitable to the yarn. The final edging consist of 3 rows hdc in the bamboo/cotton yarn and one row sc in the cotton.  The hooksizes suitable to these yarns are 3,75-4,5 mm.  I however hooked the throw in 5,5 and 6,5 mm - using the 6,5 mm for the lightest in weight in order to achieve the texture I was after.

Blocking

I steam blocked the squares in a rather rustic manner on a block made of nails and a rustic piece of wood 

See my posting titled Why I blocked all my squares for more information on the process

Stitch and Texture 

Squares in hdc, edging in sc

This throw is showcasing lovely texture by using a simple pattern, 3 different kinds of yarn and 2 different hook sizes.  It is lovely to say so myself and I am still playing with the idea of joining the squares with the flat braid pattern.

See my posting titled Progress where I blogged about the yarn and texture

I will post about the next wip on my hooks soon!  This time it is a modern looking Baktus stripey scarf in single crochet. I have a soft spot for the Baktus knitted scarfs that made the rounds among the Norwegian blogs a while back and designed a skinny version in single crochet to achieve the minimalist look I am after.

Have a wonderful weekend!