Frilly Crochet

My newly revived interest in crochet is being fuelled by three (!) books by Edie Eckman - The Crochet Answer Book, Beyond the Square Crochet Motifs and Around the Corner Crochet Borders

This is Edie Eckman's Flower Frills Scarf (Ravelry link) , you can buy from Patternfish.



Crocheted with 3.75mm hook

I used very very soft and very very shiny Handmaiden Lace Silk left over from long-ago made shawls in colours Paris (mainly) and Rainforest ( partly).
54" x 1 1/2" excluding the frills.




It's another "scarf" that is great for Summer - can be worn round your neck or as a belt. The lady at my lys kept correcting me when I called it "a scarf" - her word for it is "an adornment".

There are so many variations on this theme using the edgings from the borders book, I can't wait! In the meantime I'm hoping to show you a modelled photo from Katie because she "borrowed" it from me last Wednesday and I won't get it back for ten days or so.

I loved Amanda's English Country Garden motif cal May motif, Hawthorn, so much that I had to divert from my cal colour scheme to make something quickly and in May colours and a bag seemed a good idea. You can't have too many bags - can you?
Here it is



I made 36 motifs with extra centre flower (round 1 of the motif) worked and sewn on to the centres of some.



Can you see the swivel hooks and rings attaching the straps? That is my current favourite way.




Yarns are Natural Dye Studio Unicorn-the pale yellowy one, Dazzle ht-the pink and creamy beige ones and Angel,the sage green. The dark green is Sunshine yarns pure silk shade Moss used double and the filling/joinng rounds are NDS Precious which sets the whole thing off! I used 4mm, 4.5mm and 5mm hooks in an effort to maintain a constant gauge.



I double lined the bag for strength and also added a rigid bottom to help it hold its shape.

Little Summer Scarf

I didn't really need to do anything other than follow a simple chart to make the motifs in my previous post but this scarf was slightly more complicated.




This was how it started...



With the medium sized motifs being joined together as they were made and enough separate smaller ones to make the tasselly ends as long as I wanted.

Then you crochet all along the long edge and continue down connecting the smaller ones, then back up the other side to the top dangleys. The charts are excellent.



The pattern is from the Japanese book "Pretty Colour Crochet and Knit". And you know there are so many other pretty thing to make.... I love these books - I've got four of them now!

Each motif measures about 1 1/4". I used a 3mm hook and Jaggerspun Zephyr wool-silk. Lace weight. Mine is three motifs wide instead of the patterns four and the finished size is 52"x 5".






The very first photo taken with a cheapo webcam under an energy efficient light bulb is the truest to life colour. Actually the second one is true too.

Japanese Crochet Books

No...I don't speak Japanese but I knew I had to have these books when I first saw them on Lucy's wonderful crochet blog and they have such excellent pattern charts and pictures that words are unnecessary (I hope). I bought them from Etsy seller Pomadour24 who is so super efficient that they arrived from Japan in barely a week.




They are full of lovely little projects all shouting "make me! make me!". This is the first, underneath part of Motif A from the right-hand book - Small and Easy Crochet Projects, a very simple one to ease me into chart reading .



Then a puffy flower is made separately and stitched on top like this



and this



The yarns are Fyberspates Unicorn and NDS dazzle ht with a 5mm hook.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my English Summer garden cal motifs, I'm still very enthusiastic about these and thinking more and more that they will become a summer shawl (thanks Jean!)