Extreme crocheting!

On Friday I tested my crocheting skills to the limit. A hospital appointment meant I had several hours of waiting around - the perfect opportunity for guilt-free crochet, one might think. Unfortunately the nature of the appointment meant the first thing to happen to me was the application of eye drops which dilated my pupils. The result of this was that the world was suddenly a very blurry place! Not to be deterred I managed to produce three corsages from some of my leftover Noro yarn without being able to see where my hook was going - blind crochet! I now have my normal vision again and am pleased to report that there are no apparent errors.

It's not a technique I would recommend but it's nice to know I can do it if I must!

Gone fishing...

I've done a couple of scraper boards for the Christmas craft fair this weekend. I like them black and white but I've also copied them onto watercolour paper so I can experiment with adding colour to them tonight. I'm setting up the for the fair tomorrow morning, so I'm cutting it rather fine, but I like to work to a tight deadline!

I think fish might be my new obsession - I want to try them as linocuts and paintings as well. Right, I better go and cook tea, paint the fish, pack up the paintings, finish some crocheted corsages..... Aargh!

Noro Cowl

After finishing the Stevenson Sweater I felt the need for something fast and colourful to crochet. I'd been eyeing up the Noro yarns for a while and decided to take a couple of colour ways of the Silk Garden Lite home with me to experiment with. I had an idea of making a deep cowl to keep me warm on my winter dog walks. I'd seen the beautiful Chameleon blanket by Tracy St. John on Ravelry and was keen to use the the same pattern but join it up to make a tube. It grew really quickly (and ate up the yarn at an alarming rate!) and once joined, all I had to do was decide on the edging. I wanted something robust and tubular so I did a row of slip stitches along the edges and from there did 4 rows of double crochet. I stitched the edge of this to the inside edge of the cowl and thereby enclosed the loops of yarn that had been carried up one side of the rows. I got the idea of using the slip stitches to create a neat edge from Pinterest and I'm really pleased with how it worked.

I used 5 balls of the Silk Garden Lite but had most of the fifth ball left over so today I've had fun making butterflies. I think I'll use the rest for some corsages - the Christmas Craft Fair that I take part in is fast approaching and I need to build up my stock!