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

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!!

As one blanket ends, another begins ...

Just a quick hello today to show you the finished Tooty Fruity blanket. It's been washed and blocked and feels lovely and soft, with a nice drape to it. The sun was very bright when I took the photo below, so I had to try and stay in the shade but I still had to adjust the photo so the colours didn't look washed out.

And here's one pegged on the line - for photographic purposes only - I dried it flat on the floor.

 It measures 25" x 30" which is a nice size for a pram blanket I think. I must take some close ups later and come back and add them. I do like a good close up!!

And now it's onto the next blanket - the "mixed stripey" blanket. As I mentioned before, I bought a few more colours to add to the mix and had meant to do a bit of planning before I started but apart from planning the border first I basically jumped straight in!! Just one photo today - all the others are on my phone and it won't play ball and connect to the laptop today except by bluetooth.

This was a little try out of the border pattern. As I mentioned before, I want the blanket to be completely reversible in that there will be no obvious front and back - it will look as good from one side as the other. Now for the border, I decided to work granny rows using all ten colours with 2 colours per row. This meant I had to carry the none working colour across the back without it showing. With a bit of trial and error I did work it out and the tangle above did get unravelled.
I've already done about 30 rows and have taken a photo as most have been added, although I did forget at the beginning. Although I'm not up to being able to write a proper tutorial that even a beginner could follow, there will be enough that you could follow along if you can already crochet.

I must admit, I am in awe of the amazing people who are able to write very clear instructions on what to do and how, with lots of pics of exactly where to put your hook at every step. Tutorials take a huge amount of time and planning, as well as skill, so I will simply be telling you which stitch I used and supplying plenty of links to the lovely people who can teach you how.
(Whilst the blanket is entirely my own design, there will be snippets here and there which have been inspired by my favourite bloggers but I'll tell you when that happens.)

I'm pretty much making it up as I go - my preferred method of working! - although I have asked to borrow the Stripey Blanket I made for my friend's little girl to remind me of some stitch combinations I used before. Looking back at the photos there were a lot of rows that were just trebles but in different colours. That was way back in the early days of my crochet "adventure" when I didn't know many stitches. This one will be quite different! I just hope the colour combos won't be too gaudy.... There's no white to calm them down!

That's it for today. Things to do and crochet to be done - and photographed!! I'll leave you with a photo from Micheldever Woods taken on Saturday (which the weathermen said would be the best day of the weekend - they lied...). I think we were too early for the main crop of bluebells though - there were still a million buds waiting to open, so I'll have to go again in a couple of weeks.

Till next time,  T  xXx

Tooty Fruity Ta - Dah !!

It's finished already!!! Actually I did the final row of picots around the border at work in the shop on Monday. It still needs to be washed and blocked but that will have to wait until I have time over the weekend. It already feels really soft and squishy, so I can only imagine how much softer it might feel when washed as that should fluff up the fibres even more.
I'm very pleased with how quick it was to make too - much quicker than the springtime blanket I made last year.

I decided to go for a flat lace border - nice and open and floaty to compliment the "openness" of the main blanket but not too frilly. I started with a row of half trebles all the way round the outside, then 3 rows of treble fillet crochet before working border number 30 from Around the Corner Crochet Border by Edie Eckman. Perfect!

I don't have a final photo yet - you'll have to wait for that but here are some more WIP photos to be going on with!

If I get time over the weekend, I'll try and write up what I did at each stage, with all the links to the patterns/tutorials I used. That's assuming I won't be too busy with my next project of course!! I couldn't resist buying some extra colours to go with the Tooty Fruity collection, ready to make the stripey sampler blanket that I want to do next. More about that next time.

But I also want to make myself another waistcoat... I saw some FABULOUS real wool yarn on Instagram a couple of weeks ago and kept going back to admire it. It was quite expensive, being real British wool and hand dyed too but then it dawned on me that as I had sold the Virus Shawl, I could use the proceeds to pay for new wool! Result!! I ordered it from Kathryn of Crafternoon Treats, who was also offering a mothers day discount of 10% (I do find it hard to resist a discount...) and it arrived very quickly and it's as good as it looks in her online photos. I expected to be a bit disappointed with the colour when it arrived but actually, it was even better in real life!!

I've made a tiny sample just to see how the colours would appear - as short "rows" or "blocks". They're definitely blocks which makes it easier with the waistcoat I want to do. Last time I made one I used a variegated yarn and it was a right fiddle making the fronts and getting the stripes to match - read about it here. I'm planning on using the same pattern again.

Isn't this GORGEOUS?!!!! The colourway is called Cyclamen Shade and is inspired by deep pink cyclamens growing on a woodland floor in the shade. And I love it before I've even made something with it!!! I'm so glad I bought it!! Just love those little shots of bright green. Can't wait!

Actually, I've just thought - I have another little ta-dah. I nearly forgot! Sunday before last I finished all the circles for the Tooty Fruity Blanket and arranged them and had everything ready to go to start joining them - except the white wool to do it with... I was wondering what to do instead and then spied my pink/purple bag which was still waiting to be lined. I got it out and hunted out some fabric and a zip and set to and it was done in no time. It was made to measure to hold my wallet, phone, camera, car keys and lipstick -  I even managed to fit in my new over-glasses which are quite big (but amazing, wish I'd found some years ago...). My lovely new bag has already had 4 outings - this isn't the best shot but it will have to do for now -

Well that's it for today. I've finished work for a few days now and I'm looking forward to a family wedding and a nice rest. And a lot of crochet hopefully!!

Enjoy the Easter Holidays yourself! Til next time, T xXx


PS I love watching the view counter tick over on this blanket - nearly 17,000 now. I'm going to borrow it soon so I can write up the pattern of how I made it as I often get requests.
  

Tooty Fruity Blanket

Just popped in to say the Tooty Fruity Blanket is coming along nicely!! Here's a few WIP pics -