Crochet Pattern: Mulled Wine Snowflake

2. Mulled Wine Snowflake

Snowflake number two is written up! It's possible that I will say this about all of the snowflakes, but I think this one is my favourite.

My extremely poor photography skills don't do it justice really but the triple picots at the end give it a nice snowflake explosion kind of feel. If you know what I mean. (I'm not actually sure I know what I mean by that.)

The triple picots can be a bit tricky to get the hang of, so I intend to do a little photo guide for the blog soon. If only that pesky work didn't take so much of my crochet time up!

The pattern can be found here. As always let me know of any queries with the pattern or if there are any errors.

Happy snowflake-ing!

Yarn stash stress

I get the impression that a lot of people love their yarn stash. It fills them with ideas and inspiration and they feel comforted knowing that there is always yarn there for them to pick up.

I am the opposite. My yarn stash, which is by no means enormous, stresses me out quite a lot.

This is linked to a general dislike I have of wasting anything. Wasting is wrong and bad for the environment. Wasting means that you don't get your moneys worth of something you've paid for. Both of these are big crimes in my book.

Sometimes I feel that I walk around dragging the weight of all the things I need to use. Those vermicelli noodles that I bought for a complicated dish I'll never be bothered to make again, the nail varnish set I was given for Christmas but that I can't see being able to use up before they all go gloopy.

And yarn. Lots of lovely, colourful, stressful yarn.

You would think that this yarn stash stress would mean that I don't like to buy new yarn. Hah! If only! I have, in fact, just placed an order for several new balls of yarn from Wool Warehouse. I have projects in mind for some of the balls, but not all.

I wonder, will I ever beat my stash?

Big Stitchy Finger Project: the Quilt

A patchwork quilt was the first thing that ignited my love of textiles. I was visiting Jane Austen's house in Chawton and one of the pieces on display was a beautiful and complicated looking patchwork quilt that Jane and her sister had made.

I loved how beautiful it was, the skill it involved, the image of quiet evenings chatting and working on the quilt together, and the fact that it had become an heirloom. 

'I'm going to make a patchwork quilt.' I said. 

So I did!

No.2. Machine made quilt from pattern.

That was seven years ago, and since then I've made a grand total of two quilts. One entirely by hand and one entirely by machine. One designed by me and one following a pattern.

Quilt number three is underway, and has been for a few years now. I'm not going to lie to you, progress has stalled somewhat. 

The design is a simple log cabin, that I drew up using one of my favourite craft books ever, the Quilters Recipe Book.

I'm working it by hand as my machine didn't follow me when I moved to France three years ago. I've always loved working by hand as I find a machine aches my back quickly and the noise means I can't watch the telly at the same time!  But the problem is that in reality, hand piecing a quilt together is quite monotonous, and now that I've discovered crochet with all it's varied stitches, well, my quilt has started to gather dust.

I might pick it up a few times before I move back to the UK, but realistically it will probably be sitting in my work in progress pile until I'm reunited with my sewing machine.

The two blocks that my current quilt project is made from.

Poor neglected quilt. An heirloom in the making, I hope. But not for anytime soon.