The Tooty Stripey Blanket finally gets written up!!!

There is now a fully written pattern of this blanket, with full charts, plenty of photos and loads of information, called 

The Allsorts Blanket 

- available on Ravelry.

Who recognises this photo?? This is the stripey blanket I made for a friend's little girl when I was still learning how to crochet, way back in Dec'12 - Jan'13. 

I had a (birthday) deadline, so it was made very quickly, with no notes written - why would I  need notes??

 I created a project page on Ravelry and shared pics on Pinterest, including this one (I used to spend a lot of time on Pinterest back then). I haven't checked recently but I know at one point it had been re-pinned nearly 50,000 times!!

A blanket that was that popular deserved a written pattern surely? So in 2017, when the craft shop I used to have a part time job in, started selling yarn I decided to buy a selection of baby colours and make a new version of Emma's Blanket. And by that time not only had I learned some more stitches - I and discovered TEXTURE!

I set to making a new blanket, designing as I went, trying to write notes along the way but quickly gave that up as the blanket grew just too fast to keep up! Once it was finished, I painstakingly drew a chart detailing every row and so a new blanket was born - the Tooty Stripey Blanket! 

I published the chart on Ravelry in July 2017 and watched it quickly take flight - this  assisted by several free pattern sites that picked it up, and kindly advertised it for me for free!!

It doesn't seem possible that 3 years have passed since that design stage. I've now made several versions myself in different sizes and colours and it has become my signature blanket. And the free chart has been downloaded from Ravelry 17,500 times!!!

Back in mid-April and after much soul searching, I decided to add a very small fee to the pattern (I described it as a 'buy me a coffee' fee), along with a coupon code so customers could sill have it for free if they preferred. 

Several people over those years have said I should have charged for it from the start but it was my first pattern - and just a hand drawn chart at that - but you know I just didn't think it was good enough (or had the confidence!) to charge a fee. 

But then I released my Hope Springs Hat during lockdown. I had already decided to offer it for free during lockdown with a coupon code but I found a very small number of people were paying for it. I thought at first that I hadn't set the coupon code up properly but then a couple of  those people got in touch to say thank you for the freebie but they could afford to buy the pattern and wanted to support my design efforts by paying for it. Hence the soul searching with my blanket. 

Maybe some of those 17,500 people would have been prepared to pay a little for it... So I added a price that meant after all the fees from Paypal & Ravelry are deducted, I would be left with an average of £1 per copy. And I made it as clear as I could that it could still be downloaded for free with a coupon code.

And you know what, a few people have chosen to pay for it - if you're one of them, THANK YOU!!!

Those few sales have spurred me on to write up the pattern in full, pulling together all the other detail from it's blog page, re-writing, occasionally correcting and adding all the extra info I can think of. Hopefully, there will be photos of different stages and if I can manage it, a new computer generated chart, rather than hand drawn (eek!!).

Writing a pattern means testing it as I go by making  a new blanket but there was a problem. Lockdown had not been lifted and the wool shops were not open. I know I could have ordered all the yarn I wanted online but it's just not the same as choosing colours in person. So I kept writing and refining, a bit of testing with some scrap yarn but I felt desperate to buy a nice collection of colours and get cracking with it!!!!!!

Finally, in mid-June I heard Hobbycraft was opening! I went mid-afternoon, hoping the long queue would have happened first thing and I would only have to wait 10 minutes. But no, I waited for an hour and a half!!! Yes, a full HOUR & a HALF. This was entirely due to someone's decision to only allow 19 customers in store at a time. It's a huge warehouse but just 19 people at a time?... But I was desperate, so I waited patiently. And once I was in I wasn't leaving without a big bag of yarn, so I really took my time choosing colours!!!

Now they don't have the best range - they're not a yarn shop after all. So I came home with a big bag of 12 balls of wool - which received admiring glances from those still in the queue.!!

I took a photo of said bag, posed on the very first Tooty Stripey Blanket I had made, which used colours that reminded me of the Tooty Fruity Sweets that inspired the (ridiculous) name. And guess what??

I'd chosen new colours that looked just like the originals!! I had even bought a variegated ball!! That was definitely NOT my intention as I had hoped for a nice balance of summery colours. But I suppose you have to go with what you can get...

 

After getting over my initial annoyance, I made a start on planning a colour repeat. I made some little bobbins of each colour, with 2 each of the paler colours and just one of each bright colour - a total of twenty for my colour repeat.

I ummed and aahed for quite some time, moving them around and taking lots of pics. I added a golden yellow from my stash and a magenta. Still I wasn't quite happy though.

Finally, I decided to toss out the brighter colours you can see in this pic  and went with just the eight pastel rainbow colours that remained. 

Pity they didn't have any lilac ...

That would make the new blanket sample look even closer to the original but by then I had decided it was actually quite fitting to completely revisit the original. 

And don't worry about the colours I tossed out - I already have a project in mind for them!!

During the weeks without fresh yarn, as I said,  I had been refining and tweaking the original design, adding some extra texture rows so that they really do hop from side to side at regular intervals and taking out a couple of bits I wasn't so keen on.

Once I had yarn and started hooking, things progressed reasonable smoothly. However, there were some hiccups along the way... 

I knew I should trust my own pattern, having spent so much time and effort getting it just right. But I just couldn't help trying to tweak-as-i-go... although most of those attempts ended up with a whole lot of ripping back and doing what the pattern said - including one section that had 13 rows!!!

 

Once the main body of the blanket was completed, I  started stitching in all the ends, ready to start on the border. I considered stitching in as I went but as this was my working sample - and I kept tweaking then ripping out - I thought it wise to leave them all until the end. Once they were all done it had a little photo-shoot and will get a light blocking to properly straighten the edges, before adding the border.

But it's going well so far. Very well actually. I have a BIG smile as I look at this photo -

I've also thought long and hard about what name to give this new, fresh version of the #tootystripeyblanket . As It will be a paid pattern on Ravelry, it can't have the same name as another pattern I sell. I also want to distinguish between the chart only version and the fully written. So a new name was needed and it dawned on me that there really was only one name that would fit. 

May I introduce my signature blanket, The Allsorts Blanket!!

Shame I didn't think of it 3 years ago when I settled on tooty stripey...

There's still quite a way to go before I can publish the pattern, not the least of which will be drawing the new chart... But it will be announced here, as well as over on Instagram. And probably fb too....

Watch this space, as they say!!  Bye for now, T xx

Groundhog Day and Ta - Dah!!

For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you might have seen over the weekend that I was "tagged" to share what I was doing this time last year. So I scrolled back (and back...) until I got to roughly the same day last January - and I was truly surprised to see that I was doing exactly the same thing!!! I was looking back to the previous January (2017) and sharing what I had posted then. Coincidence or what??!!

This time last year I said I'd had a rubbish day, so had decided to look back at a better day and shared this picture of the Bargello Allium Cushion Panel I designed and made - well, still making actually but it's nearly done -

This year, I'd also had a rubbish day and had planned on sharing exactly the same pic before I was asked to share something!! And it also just happens that I've been sharing some of my bargello pics again recently, having been inspired by a lady on IG called @brightbag who has been writing a pat*tern for a crocheted version of bargello which I'm itching to try! (Her pattern is out for testing now!)
It did sort of feel like I was stuck in a time warp with the same thing happening over and over!!

Back around New Year everyone was posting their "best nine" for 2018. That is, the 9 posts in their feed that got the most likes. There was also "my year in colour", which would look for the dominant  colours per pic, again based on likes. I got the following two results -

They were ok but I would have preferred to have some more bright colours - clearly I just didn't use enough of them! Consequently, I dashed out and bought a rainbow of yarn and have been busy working on a really bright baby blanket which I've just finished. I decided to make a rainbow version of my #tootystripeyblanket but to make it a little different, I alternated the rainbow colours with white. I had to make some adjustments to the pat*tern as I went along - I swapped a few rows around, left one or two bits out, and completely left out the extended post stitches as I didn't think they'd work with the white rows.
I'm really pleased with how it turned out and have set up a project page on Ravelry should you want to know what yarn and quantities I used etc. Want to see it??? Thought so!!

I have about 60g of all the colours left, so will be making another rainbow themed blanket soon - I just need to decide on the pat*tern.

However, I have at least 3 new pat*terns that I need to finish writing up as well. Actually, make that 4 - I've just remembered one that I started nearly 8 years ago!!! Really must get that one finished...

Right now though, I'm nearly half way through another #popcorndreamsscarf (Popcorn Dreams Scarf) using a gorgeous hand dyed yarn I bought last summer that made me think of wild flowers in the heat of July - but using it in the cold of winter now makes me think of hot rice pudding with a big spoonful of raspberry jammed stirred through it!!!!!

(OOPS!!!!! I've just noticed - that's the wrong hastag on that photo!! This is definitely Popcorn Dreams, not a Tail of Two Dragons! Although I have just made another one of those too but haven't taken any pics of it yet.)

On that note, I think I might just go and look through the cupboard and see if we've actually got any rice pudding!!

Keep warm! Til' next time,    T  xXx

Catching up!

So it's been a month since I popped in here - again.... I'm sure I've done loads  in that time I could chat about, so I figured I'd just check back through my Instagram feed to see what I've been up to!

In reverse order, this is my current project - a baby blanket combining lovely big white daisies and a ripple pattern. It's called the Daisy Chain Blanket by Harlow Monroe Handmade and is available to buy from Ravelry.

There are so many different colour combos you could go for with this blanket but I went for duck-egg green, silver grey and white. It's only an acrylic/nylon yarn but is working up very soft. I don't have long to get it finished so need to get a move on really...

Prior to that was this very bright and colourful bag. It's a crochet square which was designed by Emily of the Loopy Stitch and then sold by Jane of Queen Bab's, to raise funds for a wheelchair and accessories for Jane. I decided to attach the square to the front of a very simple little bag on a long strap - just right for summer festivals!! 

I took lots of photos along the way with the intention of writing a little tutorial of how to make your own bag. It will have it's own page when it's ready but it's not quite there yet. Isn't it a GORGEOUS square though?? I really enjoyed making it too.

I'm also working on an asymmetric knitted shawl on and off, with the intention of writing up and selling the pat*tern. In the pic below it had started to go wrong though... I was using different textured stitches and tried a diagonal line - but the tension was so loose it really started to grow in width!! Needless to say, this section was frogged and something different has replaced it.

 

There's also an aran scarf in the process of writing and finalising. This also has several different textured patterns in it to make it really interesting not only to wear but also to make. All the stitch patterns are very simple though so that even an adventurous beginner could make it. Here I've used a wool & alpaca blend to make it the initial sample and it came out beautifully! 

A lady at Knit and Knatter is testing the pattern with acrylic and it's quite a different beast...

I was delighted to manage to get one of the new ten pence pieces recently. Someone was going to the Royal Mint for a visit, so bought one in a presentation pack for me - and joy of joys, it's got a Tea Pot on it!!! How apt!! (See my Tea Cosie tab!!)

On a perhaps more solemn note, I managed to get to see the Poppy Wave display at Fort Nelson near Portsmouth, just before it closed. Oh my, what an absolute spectacle it was!! Quite stunning and a very moving tribute to those who fought and lost their lives in the First World War.

It had originally formed part of the display of poppies at the Tower of London in 2014 and has been touring the country - this was it's last stop before going on permanent display in Liverpool. 

It was a beautiful morning and we popped down early, partly to be there before it got busy and partly as we had other things to do that day. I'm very glad we were there early as when we left around 11.30am, the queue looked to be at least 2 hours long!! It was definitely worth a 2 hour wait - but it was in the blazing sun...

If you pop in here regularly, you will know that I designed a mixed stitch crochet blanket just over a year ago, which is available as a free pat*tern on Ravelry (see the separate tab at the top of the page). It had it's one year anniversary of being published last week - and look how many people have downloaded it in that year!! I hope at least 1% have actually used the pattern, rather than simply download it...

And I'll end today with my most recent finished and published pat*tern - my Popcorn Dreams Scarf. It felt like it took an age to design and make it, write it up, test it, get other people to test it as well.... But I got there eventually. All the versions below are by my testers and aren't they simply lovely?? If you'd like to see more images, then pop across to Instagram and search for the hashtag #popcorndreamsscarf .

This one is by Helen, aka Flora Honeypot.

This is by Jan.

And this one by Julie - and she dyed the yarn herself.

This lovely, slightly larger version is by Torun - it shows how easily you can adapt the pat*tern to suit the size you'd like.

And here's a little montage of pics - and none of them are my own!!

I'll finish today with this fabulous pic of the Cathedral that I took earlier this week in the evening sunlight. I even managed to get the statue of the soldier in the shot.

I'm off on my hols very soon, so won't be back here until August. Hope you're enjoying the unexpected heatwave we are still having here in the UK?! I'm really hoping it will last another 2 weeks!

Take care,   T  xXx

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year already?  And just where did that year go?! In some ways it feels like it should only be February... and I completely forgot to wish everyone Merry Christmas. I did it on Instagram but not here... sorry...

If I had remembered to pop in here, I could have told you about the gift swap I was going to do with a lady I met on Instagram, the lovely @florahoneypot. She asked if anyone would be interested in doing a swap with her and so many people said yes, she picked 10 of us!! We told each other a bit about ourselves and swapped addresses. This is what I sent her - a project bag I made and a few other bits and bobs, some hand made and others purchased. She was very happy with her gifts when she opened them on Christmas Day.

And this is what she gave me - 

 

A beautiful pair of soft grey wrist warmers which I plan to wear in the office as they won't stop me using the keyboard. A skein of hand dyed yarn, a sweet little tin (I love tins and boxes and I've already filled it!), a reel of ribbon, a tape measure, chocolates and a colouring book. Such generosity from someone who's never even met me!! She certainly helped bring a little magic back into Christmas this year!

She must have been very busy making things to put in her gift swap with 10 people...

I've made quite a few things myself this year when I think about it. There was the Tooty Fruity Blanket I gave my niece for her first baby.

Then I used the remaining yarn to design my own stripey blanket which I called "The Tooty Stripey Blanket". It now seems a silly name but it made sense at the time!

I wanted to use lots of different stitches and textures and for it to be completely reversible. It took a surprising amount of time to write up the chart ready to release on Ravelry. But I got there eventually and was very happy with it. I quickly followed it with a rainbow coloured version to test the pattern and correct any errors.

    

I knew it would work as a full sized blanket as well as a baby size, and quickly started it in the colours Lucy of Attic24 was using for her latest project. She was making her Harmony Blanket again but in her original set of colours - so in her honour, I called my full size blanket my Tooty Harmony!!
It became my favourite make of the year and it is very warm and snuggly - although it never did reach "full size" as I ran out of yarn and decided to leave it as it was. It covers me from toes to chest and is perfect for chilly winter evenings.

I've just had a quick look at Ravelry and my pattern has been downloaded 1886 times as of today! There are a very small number of comments and projects using it though but I suppose that's what happens when you give something away for free. Everyone takes a copy but then doesn't use it. Had I charged a small amount maybe it would only have been downloaded by people who would actually use it. But that's fine. I like a free pattern myself and will often adapt them to suit my needs. 

I was Very Pleased to see a lady on IG was using my pattern and she made a lovely little baby blanket herself. She said how much she enjoyed using my pattern and that it was well written and thankou for all the extra hints and tips on my blog page (see the button at the top of the screen). If you're on IG, her username is RAFsweetheart. She has promised to email a photo to share with you, so I'll come back and add it as soon as it arrives.

Edit - here it is!!!

She made a fabulous job of it! I still can't quite believe that I designed it - or that I managed to write up a chart for 80+ pattern rows that anyone managed to follow!!

I went on to make two more baby blankets as gifts using some of the leftover little bits from my Tooty Harmony Blanket - I called them Harmony Baby Blankets. The colours I used are the same - but one is then joined with cream yarn and the other with colours. They have different borders but apart from that, the pattern is the same. It just goes to show what a difference colour can make to a project!!

One exciting thing that happened this year was that we started to sell wool in the craft shop - that meant we could set up a knit and natter group! Or as I like to call it "Knit & Knatter, Crochet & Chatter"! It's a lovely little group of ladies, some of whom knit and others crochet - and some are very new to each. And they all knatter!!! It's the best two hours of the week!!

We have some nice baby wool in the shop and I bought a set which I used to make this baby blanket, using a free pattern I'd seen on Instagram (and yes, I made sure to say thankyou and give credit when I shared pics!). The pattern is called "Lost in Time" and was well named as you really could lose track of time while working on it. I put it in my Folksy shop and it sold to a lady in Scotland who bought it for her grand daughter.

I had a message from her a few weeks later thanking me again for the blanket and saying it was so lovely, people kept admiring it more than her grand daughter!!! That made my day!

This little cardigan is a sample I made for the shop - it was also the first time I think I took a lot of time and effort photographing something  for Instagram. I'd read a tutorial somewhere on how to take better product shots and this was my dry run! Since then, I've always tried to take good shots against a neutral background - and try and make sure my name is on it somewhere too!

During the first half of the year, I took a holiday in the north east to visit a friend and she took me to Whitley Bay and the most amazing shop I've ever seen - Ring-a-Rosie Yarn. It was during this visit that I discovered and fell in love with hand dyed yarn. The owner Barbara is an indie dyer and this is just a taste of what she'd done -

I keep buying it and the colours are so lush - but I must stop buying 4 ply! I hate using 4 ply as it takes so long to make anything but very few of the indie dyers ever use anything thicker, although luckily Barbara did.

During the summer, I entered a tea cosie design competition in a magazine and won the runner-up prize!! This is what I made on a theme of the Blooming Great Tea Party for Marie Curie -

She's available for sale in my Etsy shop (link in sidebar) with all proceeds being donated to Marie Curie.

My prize was an awful lot of Sirdar Cotton Yarn which I've used before and is a dream to work with. I made myself a project bag to keep big projects in and put a pic on instagram. Well, I had a comment from someone asking if she could order one!! Well, yes, I said, that would be fine!! We agreed a price and I set to working on it. I modified the lining for her as she planned on using it as a shoulder bag rather than a project bag and then I posted it off to the US and waited for it to arrive. And waited. And waited... A full 2 weeks later, it did indeed arrive and she was very happy with it - phew!!

I did enjoy making it and there's now a beach bag design swimming round in my head!!

If you're a regular visitor, you will know I've been knitting a tunic dress for the great niece who received the Tooty Fruity Blanket. I decided to be clever and make it in the round but it took soooooo long!! It was also coming out quite small... Luckily it does fit her but won't last long!

It was at this point it dawned on me that after spending most of my life knitting, I do not work my purl rows rather loosely - I work my knit rows rather tightly!! Who knew?? It's taken me 40 years to learn that fact!!!! It would explain why I detest working garter stitch which is knit stitch on every row. I always found it a very tight stitch to work and avoided it like the plague - now I know why.

I've had a little look to see what were the 3 most popular posts on my blog this year and they were -

Emma stripey blanket
Lost in time ta dah 
Ringarosie Yarns

I'm not surprised the post about Emma's blanket was so popular (I made it nearly 5 years ago and it's had almost 20k views on Ravelry!) but the other two did surprise me. I think the second one must have been mentioned on facebook somewhere as I suddenly had a lot of traffic from there after it had sold. And Ringarosie Yarns?? Well, such a wonderful shop deserves to come in the top three!!

I had a look at my top posts on Instagram too - I found a handy app that produced this for me -

All my favourite blankets, plus my Bargello Alliums - I really must get on and finish that!!

I was scrolling through earlier today looking at everyone elses best nine of 2017 and saw this -

At first I thought, hold on, that's MY BLANKET top right!! What's it doing there?? Then I read what Ali had put underneath and saw that she had tagged 9 people and her favourite pic from their page. IG have changed their algorithms recently, so if you have less than 2000 followers your pictures come up on fewer peoples feeds. So she thought she'd show her faves! How lovely!! Thank you so much Ali!!

I'd like to share two more things before I wish you Happy New Year - firstly, another little video. This time of our cat Fluffy having a whale of a time with the wrapping paper on Christmas Day!! Turn your sound up!

And secondly, a New Years Resolution. To use garter stitch!!!! 

Now that I know it was just my tight tension that was the problem, I'm going to give it a try.  Here are some pics of a sample piece I'm working on - this is using a scrap of hand dyed that I bought from Barbara of Ringarosie. It's a variation on the Hitchhiker scarf which is plain garter stitch (a pattern which Barbara told me about). I thought it would look good with some purl rows thrown in and some eyelets. 

The hand dyed yarn I'm going to use has been wound and I just need to check the tension with it before casting on. Watch this space!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

And THANK YOU for stopping by!!

Tina xXx

PS Apologies if this post is a little disjointed - it took a long time to write as I kept popping back in and out!! I've got some things in the wrong order and have probably missed other things which should have had pride of place... and there aren't enough links!!