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

Driftwood and Waves

The moment one steps foot into my friend's magnificent home, the eyes are drawn to raw wood, clear glass and shades of stone and bone. I always notice the huge glass bowl filled with driftwood collected during a recent coastal holiday, displayed in the foyer. 

The driftwood journey is free flowing, it recognises no borders or restrictions, only the flow of time and events.  My friend acknowledged the integrity of driftwood in a recent Facebook posting, perhaps not realising the parallels with her own life journey.

Last weekend over a leisurely breakfast, she told me of her plans to travel France, Italy and Greece this coming summer with her children. This will include barging on French Canals and soaking up the sun on a Greek Island. Have a great time my friend, the scarf will come in handy.

C'est La Vie!

Photography by Naomi

Yarn: Vinnis Serina, hand dyed, hand balled 100% bamboo yarn; I chose bamboo as a symbol of our friendship (as per Indian Symbolism) and her own tenacity and elegance (as per Chinese Symbolism).  The silver colourway respects her wardrobe preferences of white, black and denim and connects water, stone and wood.

Pattern: Nancy's Waves Scarf by Cori Dodds, I preferred a lengthwise adaptation of the pattern as also executed so beautifully by Jen. The edging is a pattern by another Jen, Jen Valure as used for the Luna Lovegood scarf.

Driftwood by Poppytalk

  

Photography by Naomi

Roots and Stones by Elena Ray

Patchwork Blanket

 

Hello!  I am so glad this blanket is finished, it is pretty and I quite liked working in these colours, but I am also yearning to work in a more subdued palette again. The colours and blanket remind me of the sugus chewy candy we used to gorge on as kids.  During road trips we challenged one another to unwrap and stack as many sugus as possible before shoving it in our mouths to chew and chew and chew until our jaws ached! Ah, I loved taking a trip down memory lane with this piece.

Patchwork Blanket

Squares: Single Crochet (US); 14 x 7 squares = 98 in total; each square 15 x 15 cm
Click on Pattern for new tutorial

Size of the Blanket: 110 x 220 cm.  I decided to steer away from the initial square I planned and am really pleased with the final dimensions of my blanket 

Hook Size: 5mm

Yarn: Raeesah Summer Cotton Yarn available from Charming Wool

Bobble Edging: See Heidi Bears for her lovely pattern and tutorial.   

This is a heavy throw and I decided to line it in a white toile with a whimsical black pattern to help keep the shape of the piece.  Because of the weight of a big blanket, I think that this yarn is more suitable to smaller baby blankets and projects such as handbags, cushions and toys.
Raeesah colours are really pretty and clean - a combination of hues and tints.  I think this is a great yarn for those enjoying a more solid look opposed to slightly mottled effects of hand dyed cottons.  I personally prefer the mottled effect and have an affinity for greyed down or toned colours, however I am quite in love with this blanket. 

Colour planning: Granny Square Color Pattern Generator.  I have written about the colour generators in this posting and even though I never planned to use this yarn and pattern for a blanket (I bought the yarn for The Teen to keep her fingers out of my Vinnis stash!) the idea of a fun, colourful patchwork blanket just stuck. Using the initial colours as a guideline, but replacing the white with cream and adding a red to the combination, I regenerated this pattern

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Have a great Valentine's Day and weekend. 

The husband is in Qatar and the kids and I will lick our wounds (still in South Africa) by licking a gelato each. Italians opened an authentic Gelateria nearby and I have already sampled the Pistachio as well as Cinnamon Honey flavours. Yum! 

Here is the very first pic the husband took in Downtown Doha. I love the grit and character.

Cheers!

Patchwork blanket hanging from the hooks

This year has certainly kicked off with a big bang and I can't believe how busy January has been!  

I just crossed out this coming Monday morning in my diary and will either sleep in or spend the morning at the beauty parlour, depending on whether I can actually haul myself out of bed for a pampering session.  

We have been shopping (cardigans, shrugs and leggings to transform our minis and sleeveless tops since the official dress code in Qatar requires shoulders and knees to be covered) and entertaining relocation agents; applied for all sorts of clearance certificates and submitted those to Foreign Affairs for Legalisation after the Attorney took it via the High Court for Authentication.  A final stamp from the Embassy and The Husband's work visa is in place and he is off to Qatar tomorrow.  Let's hope that they don't take their sweet time processing our residency permits since we will only join him after all of those are in place. 

The fight to locate a misplaced/missing unabridged birth certificate here at Home affairs is also in full swing.  For goodness sake, when will this country's Home Affairs Department actually get their own affairs in order? The absence of proper systems and the volume of missing documentation boggles the mind. We just laugh, it is part of the experience of living the way we do.

Meanwhile I take time out at night to work on my patchwork crochet blanket. This is a sneak peek of the squares and colours, but you might be interested in knowing that I am also using stronger colours such as red and purple in the design. I have a soft spot for the simplicity of single crochet stitches and the blanket consists of 100 squares all hooked in the same pattern. Single crochet also seems to be a clever solution to a yarn that splits just by the eye staring at it.  I am using Reaasah by Kismet yarns, a 100% cotton worked up in a hook size 5mm.  I find it interesting that the cream/natural does not split at all.  Hmm perhaps the splitting can be attributed to the dyeing process? 

This is all for now, enjoy your weekend! 

Oh, I couldn't resist -  this is what the more vibrant squares look like.

Cheers!

Sending Ripples

Hello!

Two years ago the children and I lived in a gorgeous villa in the middle of the rainforest on the tropical island of Penang, Malaysia and frequently traveled via taxi, ferry, train and plane to our apartment near Lumpini Park in Bangkok, Thailand where The Husband was working. I loved those train trips as I spent many hours crocheting away listening to the clickety clack of the train on a track. Bangkok was a 1 hour and 50 minute flight away from Penang Island; a 22 hour slow train trip covered the same distance!

A year and a half ago, we all packed up to continue our adventures in Mumbai, India and two weeks before the container with our belongings was to be shipped to India, the company's sister office in South Africa requested The Husband to join them in Johannesburg. Aaaaack! I arrived in South Africa kicking and screaming since I had to withdrew myself from a highly interesting ethnographic research I had just committed to in Asia. 

Today we are packing up house once again. Just because you were born somewhere, doesn't mean you belong there. We don't belong in South Africa, we are Global Nomads feeling at ease where East meets West. We are returning to our beloved Middle East where we raised our family for 8 years prior to living in South East Asia. We experienced Dubai rising from the desert, we are off to Qatar to experience the same all over again. We are beyond excited, we love living in the middle of the world where a 2-3 hour flight takes one to the most amazing destinations imaginable! Iran, India, Turkey and Tibet; the world is my oyster.

Talking about oysters - I used to love wearing neutral shades of oyster, blush, nude and peach, and especially like the combination of these with silvery grey.  I have this major urge to  revamp not only my wardrobe to incorporate more of these lighter colours, but am thinking of hooking a throw for our new abode in the desert in neutrals too.  

This scarf (hmm, yip another scarf!) is hooked in Vinnis Nikkim 100% cotton yarn in Peach-558. I absolutely fell in love with the Vintage Fan Ripple stitch by Janis Cortese and might use the same stitch for a blanket in a vintage colour scheme in the future.  

Note: 

The pattern diagram on Ravelry indicates hdc as the foundation stitches of the fans - it should in fact be sc (US terminology).  Even though the symbols are incorrect, Janis describes the stitches correctly.

Drawings source links on Pinterest  

Print by Jacqueline Maldonado