First Afrikaans article published in a South African magazine

My friend Christelle started a Facebook group about two years ago called Ons Hekel (We Crochet). It has grown from strength to strength and has brought together many fabulous women who loves to crochet.

I wrote an article about her and the group for Idees, an Afrikaans magazine celebrating creative inspiration in true South African style. The article can be seen in the June edition which will go on sale this week.

Recycled blanket continue

After I finished the blankets, I was left with these knitted triangles from the original blanket. I thought I would use it to make a cushion cover or something similar, but as usual plans changed along the way...

I ended up with a string of knitted bunting instead.

I used slip stitches to attach the triangles and chain stitches in between. I followed this with two rows of single crochet stitches.

Here you can see the 'front' and 'back' of the string.

I had this ball of variegated turquois yarn for a while, but it never really spoke to me. It just sat there in the stash. And then suddenly last week it had something to say... (such fickle things, yarn)

Recycled blanket

Many years ago my mother knitted a blanket for our home. 

It was huge and multi-coloured and full of love and hard work. Over the years this blanket was used for picnics, for lounge forts and garden tents and for keeping us warm by a camp fire.

But as life happened on and around this blanket, it collected it's fair share of scars and wounds. In the end, it just didn't look good any more. It was time to be upcycled and recycled into something new.

Over the past month I seperated all the blocks, sorted them by colour and reassembled them with crochet borders into three seperate, smaller blankets.

Now every child has his and her own blanket, knitted by Gran and crocheted by Mom.

Blue for Jandre,

pink for Anika,

and green for Stefan.

Ready for the next round of forts, picnics and campfires..

Never too young...

The Princess trying her hand at crochet

Crochet Experiments

I came upon this blog post by Creative Fidget a while ago via Pinterest. 

It made me think of the pile of t-shirt yarn I made ages ago and haven't used yet. 

(Now that I am packing I think of a lot of things I stash for later use....)

My experiment with crocheting a piece of t-shirt yarn into a spiral has produced this.  I tried different ways of  covering the yarn to expose it more or less.  I think if I alternate the color of the t-shirt yarn and the color of the crochet yarn, I might just get something interesting going here...

Now back to packing...

A quick recap of 2011

Before I get into 2012, let's have a quick look back over the past year to see what have been accomplished:

Tried black-work for the first time:

black work portrait

Started knitting again - first time since childhood:

knitted portrait

mystery knitted project - unfinished

Did only one crochet project (unfinished as yet):

babette

Made two tutorials:

templates

embroidery pattern

Made two quilts:

stash-buster 1

stash-buster 2

Traveled to three countries:

Kenya

South Africa

Oman

Started a few long term project (still going...):

Project ABC

Arabian inspired designs

And a few other odd things:

I revamped the blog and designed a logo

I visited a few souks

I have many plans for 2012, which include lots of stitching, monetizing and travel.

Now, lets get to work!

Project ABC: B is for Bicycle

When I first wrote my list of words, the image which came to mind when I decided on Bicycle as my B-word, was something completely different from what I have now done.  I was thinking along the lines of using actual bicycle parts like a wheel rim or a gear sprocket to make something.  But seeing that I didn't have any bicycle parts lying around, and to go out looking for it would just take too much time, I changed my mind, as we women tend to do.

My brand new bicycle arrived this week, so I decided to personalize it a bit.  At first I planned something much more colourful, but when the bike arrived it was so beautifully white that I couldn't bring myself to detract from it's white awesomeness.

I decided on filet-crochet as a medium, firstly because I haven't tried it yet and secondly because it goes relatively fast.   

The words on the crochet piece says 'Ansie Dansie'. 

It is a nick name I acquired many years ago while on a camping holiday in Namibia with a group of friends. I don't see these friends very often as we live far apart these days, but it always bring back good memories when I talk to them and they call me that. 

 I hope this bicycle will bring back that same feeling of youthfulness and energy which I associate with the name and the memory.

Babette

Just a quick pic to show you what I am up to lately. My next Babette Blanket.

The blocks are all done.  Now for the assembly...

Old t-shirts become new... what?

The boys are in that pre-teen phase of life where they grow so fast you can almost see them getting taller by the minute. It means their wardrobes needs adjusting on a regular basis.
During the summer I threw out loads of t-shirts which was to small, not worn enough to throw away, but not new enough to pass on either. So I had to find another use for them.

I decided to cut them into strips to make 'yarn'. I found a tutorial on Instructables (I really searched but I can't find the link anymore!) on how to cut a t-shirt into a continious strip.


Soon the pile of t-shirts turned into a pile of yarn-balls.


The balls sat around my work table for a month or so as I did not have a hook big enough for the thickness of the yarn.


But today I finally got around to trying out my new 10mm hook. Now I have a t-shirt-yarn hexagon. It feels thick and strong but also soft and plyable at the same time.


So what will it become? Any suggestions?

Spiral crochet soccerball

After lots of delays, and more than a month after the end of the World Cup the ball is finished at last!



Although I like the finished ball I think the process was a lot more satisfying than the end result. I loved the process of designing the pattern and figuring out the spirals. I also loved making the individual hexagons/pentagons. I like the colours and I am happy that I added the solid colours to the variegated ones. But somehow the finished ball is not as spectacular as I imagined it would be...



I had to make a lining as the crochet was to 'holey' to keep the stuffing in. I chose black as I just wanted it to disappear in the background and not make a colour statement. Now I think it makes the ball dull. Maybe I should have picked one of the main colours - yellow? blue? I don't know...



Initially I had in mind a whole series of balls made with different techniques of needlecraft. But now that the football fever has died down it sort of lost it's appeal. I still feel there should be at least three balls and I really want to make an embroidered one, but I am not sure about the design yet. And I have a whole list of other things I want to get to...

So the jury is still out on the third one. The inspiration might come while I am working on my next project...

Soccerball Progress (not!) 3

Remember last time I said things like "only 15 to go" and "finish before the start of the World Cup"? Well, it ain't gonna happen...
I went to the yarn shop last week to buy one more ball of each colour and... they ran out of the variegated colours! And apparently they don't plan to order more any time soon, so I had to improvise.



I bought one of each of the main colours from every variegated yarn and went home to redesign my pattern.



After some deliberation I changed a few of the swirls from variegated to solid colours. I had to do it in such a way that the colours are evenly spread around the ball. It meant I had to undo some (most) of the finished hexagons to change one colour to a solid. It also meant that each hexagon now has to be individually labelled because every one has a very specific place in the bigger scheme of things.



So, the Good News is: It will look better this way - more depth in the colours
but the Bad News is: It won't be finished before kick-off on Friday...

African Flower

During my past week's blog browsing I came across a picture of an African Flower crochet hexagon. I have never seen it before and had to try it.

This is what it looks like, following the pattern. I then decided to make a few changes and the second one looks like this:

I changed the dc's in the centre to sc'c to keep it more compact. I also made the centre a different colour to make it look more like a flower. I really like the first green row of sc's - it frames the flower nicely.

I have a few things in progress at the moment which I have to finish first, but I can see a new blanket brewing... (as if I need it)

Apparently there is a whole Flickr group dedicated to African Flowers, so if you have access to Flickr, check it out.

Soccer Ball Progress 2

It is going a bit slower than I want it to, but at least there is some progress...



Only 17 days to go before the World Cup starts! I hope to be finished by then...



17 blocks down, 15 to go.