miss marie's miscellany

Cool and cooler

More African flowers on the go lately, I like this pattern a lot as the possibilities of colour combinations are endless and delightful. I usually favour what I'd call cool colours ie not too bright, but I thought I should get out of my comfort zone and spice it up

I bought these vividly coloured yarns when I visited Liverpool in this fantastic Aladdin's cave of a shop, well worth visiting if you are in Merseyside or North Wales, or you can order online too. I really couldn't decide if they worked or if I was completely mad to try pink, yellow and orange together. but I'm glad now that I went against my instinct. It is bright and summery and the black edging brings it all together IMO.

Just for a cooler contrast, I made some in a different colour mood; there is a bright pink along with pale pink, turquoise/green and white, again edged with black.

Although the green and bright pink are pretty vivid on their own, the combination with the 2 paler shades gives a more spring like palette.

I like them both, the first is very uplifting on a wet cold windy day like it is here in Glasgow today, and the second is soothing on a hot sunny day like it was on Tuesday in Glasgow........yep, it's the good old British Summer, feels like Autumn today and a couple of days ago I was roasting myself in the garden!!

 

Flower power

Much flowery hooking going on in these parts of late, I've been making lots of the ones I showed you in my last post. They just kept on multiplying till I had quite a stack of them. Enough for some floral decorating.........

Voila!

I used some of my stash of Scottish lambs wool in fuchsia pink and scarlet and used 2 different sizes of hook,  3.5 and 4,  just to give a small variety in the flowers; it's hardly noticeable, but I like the non-uniformity of size, much as you would get in a real garden.

i initially was going to make a long crocheted chain to join them together but it just didn't look right and the flowers were decidedly droopy........not good! So I threaded them onto some white cord and it's worked a treat; the flowers have their heads held high and they can be moved along the cord to wherever looks good and they stay put.....result.

I've put it in my Etsy and Foksy shop; please feel free to pop over there and take a look!

I really like this flower pattern, and wondered how it would look in some different colours?

I think they're all lovely, and the possibilities to use them in different projects are many..........so, yes, there will be lots more flowery items being made. Perfect for summer!

 

 

 

What's hooking?

A lovely lazy week spent pottering at home has been just the tonic for me, with the bonus of some hot and sunny weather to top it off nicely. I've done a lot of hooking, playing around with some ideas and patterns.

Some old favourites in a pink, purple and white colour scheme

These are going to end up as a blanket, finishing soon, I hope.

Something for Christmas maybe, just thinking ahead!

I have to block these as the ends of the points are not behaving, but I think they'll look great, a long garland of these in different colours would be very festive!

And last but not least, something pretty, in summery pinks and red

and raspberry and turquoise

I really love these flowers (pattern in Erika Knight's book Crochet Stitch motifs). It's an easy pattern to follow and they don't take long to make. As the weather is a bit changeable today, I'm staying put and will carry on making my pile of flowers grow a bit bigger!

Happy weekend!

Daily snapshot:6

Today I take you into my purple shed for a look at what's happening in there.

A bit of a pink and red theme going on in there on the desk today, with a shades of pink granny square being helped along by a lovely glass of rose with my red iPod playing some mellow tunes! Also a bit of magazine reading going on, a new to me publication Mollie Makes, which I'll save to talk about once I've read it from cover to cover.

Daily snapshot:5

A rainy day, typical Scottish summer weather!..........seemed like a perfect day for watching some TV whilst playing around with some crochet ideas.

Lime and violet part 2

I've been working away with those lovely yarns I bought a couple of weeks ago and finally finished my rose motif cushion cover today. Here it is, out in the sun and looking pretty gorgeous IMHO!!

I made one side in the rose motif squares, 9 squares in total, each with 5 rounds.

And the other is a granny stripe pattern of the 3 colours, with 2 rows of each colour in each stripe.

It's fastened with lime green mis-matched buttons (bought on Etsy from this seller, BigFish; well worth a look, she has oodles of fantastic button!).

It's a happy coincidence that as I was finishing this off, these lovely purple roses are blooming in the garden, serendipitous indeed.

I'm liking this harmony between my crochet and my garden, it's magical when that happens!

Roses

Today there are roses outside

and in

More of the indoor ones very soon........tomorrow, hopefully!!

Lime and violet

 

I bought some more wool.......which was probably a bit naughty of me, as there is plenty in this house already but, well, the colours are lovely, and very 'me',  and they were a bargain! Resistance was futile!

I started making some of these rose motifs on Friday (pattern by Sarah London)

Over the weekend I've made some more squares and I also began making a large granny stripe square (pattern is found in this book......or you can just pop over to Lucy's blog where she has done a great tutorial for this pattern).

And this is how things look today

 

A while back, I bought these great lime green buttons on Etsy

So one of them was used to make this flower brooch (pattern found here)

I think I'm craving bright colours just now as the weather in Scotland has been awful for the last 3 weeks or so, more autumnal than spring going into summer. So I think there will be lots of vivid and zingy colours on this blog for the foreseeable future :-)

 

 

 

More African flowers

Do you remember a little while ago I showed you these African flower hexagons?

I wasn't exactly sure what they would become........but I kept on making them and joining them together

and over the weekend, and with final finishing off today,  they have turned into this

lovely cushion cover. I used 2 shades of pink, light and deep raspberry, leaf green and white, edged all the hexagons in black and joined them together with the black yarn too. I think the black makes the lighter colours sing out.

i used some mother of pearl buttons for fastening

I sewed the buttons on at the point where the hexagons meet, made an extra row of hexagons with chain loops at the bottom point on the other side, et voila, a nice tidy envelope fastening.

I'm still loving making these, they look so pretty and with every colour combination, they have a completely different character.

I'm thinking about making a bag next; possibly pyschedelic, I feel like mixing colours up big style! Plus, I still have 3 half made items on the go, so I really should get those completed so I can show them here. Best get on with it!!

 

 

 

 

April 2011