Crochet on the go

With the colder weather I thought it would be nice to invest in a hot water bottle and make a cover for it. I saw a pattern for a cover in "The Art Of Crochet" publication. Its one of those series of projects that are released on a weekly basis and end up giving you a complete compendium of patterns and stitch directories. The  person whom collected all the articles would have paid a fortune for them, but I picked up the folder for a mere four dollars from the craft trading table last week.

Anyway when this hot water bottle cover is finished it will have a lovely snowflake on it for decoration.
I quite like the base stitch, it has a nice texture and is easy to do - alternating stitches of double crochet with treble and the next row alternating treble with double crochet to give a ribbed effect.

I am still using the reams of grey wool that I purchased, hence all the grey based projects. I thinks I've used about half of the wool

see what I mean about the textured effect.
And below is the finished poncho with neck trim and zipper in situ and scalloped border.  Just have to get to the post office sometime this week - sometimes I just let things lie around for a while before they get sent off to their recipient.

Giant Motif Shawl

My last visit to Canberra to see my sister and her family lead me to do some crochet, mainly whilst travelling but also as a leisure activity. I made a huge dent in a chevron crochet blanket for my son. All the crocheting inspired the kids to make tomboys and huge strings of knitted ropes, which became mini rugs when sewn together. 

My niece inquired whether i could make a poncho for winter. (Of course I said yes but that was last year!) The colder months are now barrelling towards us with nothing on the hook until yesterday . I think that I spend such a huge amount of time actually looking for a pattern and then do nothing about it. Originally I was to make a poncho with owls in it, but the pattern I chose ended up not being suitable. Then she requested minty green colours but I can't find any in wool that is suitable (unless I go online and I tend to want to buy wool when I can see and feel it). 

So after all that I decided to take a completely different tack and utilize my abundant supply of grey wool with brights. An old Vogue Pattern had stuck in my mind and I  thought that this would make good use of multitude of colours.

It is a 1971 edition book printed in the USA. Vogue Guide To Crochet. Dig the hat

The shawl is made up of 5 blocks. Some of the instructions were a little hard to follow and the pictures are not particularly clear, so it was a little bit of trial and error. The white star was the first block I did and probably the hardest only because I was crocheting in English instead of American stitches. Silly me.
The five blocks below. I'm just sticking to a grey background with bursts of colour in the middle. I'm undecided if I will make this as the pattern states - as a shawl - or make it all in one, throw over the head style poncho and not bother with half triangles. Do I do tassels??  Plenty of time to think about that.

Homemade block stretcher.

I really do have to learn not to take my photographs at night! Crap photographer - but you get the idea!

Back to Hooky fun.