Crochet Fun! New blanket, poncho and toddler shoes WIP! Also Burg Hohensyburg...

Hello there!

I wanted to post for some time but a cold and then a bladder infection knocked me out (still fighting with the latter... YUCK). Wish me luck that no other sickness will come after this one! :P

Crochet... 

For christmas I got the Stylecraft Special DK color set. It is the set of colors Lucy from Attic24 used for her granny stripes blanket. Like Michelle I am part of the Creative Crochet Crew on Facebook and for month people have been gushing about the Special DK yarn and so after month of looking at it longingly I asked for a set for Christmas... Well, let's say: I understand the gushing now. Of course it is acrylic yarn and not as lovely as merino or something like that buuutt it is brilliant to work with. It just glides over the fingers. My favorite color by far is pomegranate (I need to keep myself from drooling over it), but there are 16 other nice colors in the pack too.

I got my parcel early January and spent some days planing and wondering what I might make with it. So many ideas! So many possiblities! Oh, oh, the choices...

In the end, I decided to go for the corner to corner blanket pattern from Red Heart Yarns. In the CCC group everyone was talking about it and as you can see in previous posts, Michelle is quite a fan too. The tutorial is a bit though to understand at first but with the help of this youtube video I mastered the art of the Corner to Corner!

It's not finished yet but I am already on the "making it shrink" part. So far I made three rows of each color two times ( = 102 rows in total) with a 4,5 mm hook and will go back the same way. As you might guess my blanket will be square . I spent some time thinking about a retangular one but in the end I wanted to spend the yarn evenly. I hope there will be enough yarn but so far it looks good. I put some yarn balls on a scale and each of them still has 50 gramms at least. Therefore my chance to finish the blanket with the one color pack looks good! Cross your fingers!

NOTE: The finished blanket can be found in this post!

Earlier the week a good friend's little girl turned one. She (= her mum) asked for crochet shoes for her birthday and thus I am busy making some pairs. Unfortunatly I didn't managed to finish them in time for her birthday (I spent most of last week sick in bed) but I hope both mum and birthday girl will like them anyway.

Some weeks ago I came across a lovely pattern for baby boat shoes from the blog Whistle and Ivy and saved it right away. Lucky me that I got to use it so soon!

My shoes doesn't look like a shoe yet but it's getting there... What do you think of the colors?

I am also working on a poncho for myself. I got a voucher for yarn from my work mates for my birthday last year and I spent it on some really lovely yarn. It's called lana grossa garzato baby alpaka. So soft and fluffy! Doesn't look like a poncho yet but getting there:

Walking...

Over the last weeks winter came to Germany. Well, Germany except Dortmund that is. While most of the country had snow, we had rain. Eeekk. I would have loved to see some snow but it seems it’s not in the picture for us this year. We did however have a lovely winter day today, that is sun and almost cold temperatures (8 ° C) and so the boyfriend and I decided to take a walk.

We drove to Burg (Castle) Hohensyburg. The castle itself lies in ruins but the view from up there is quite stunning. Take a look! Definitely worth walking about there! When the walking path aren’t that muddy and slippery anymore, we plan to walk around the forest there. Perhaps even up to the castle starting down at the river. It’s the river Ruhr by the way. The Ruhr flows past my work place as well. So pretty! I will take some pictures in spring to show you.

 

The first signs of spring! Can you believe it?! It’s so early in the year!

Cooking and drinking...

At least the bladder infections gives me a reason to drink a lot of tea. Something I should do anyway… We got this pretty tea pot for Christmas. It’s brilliant! It has a very large tea strainer which leaves the tea floating around and the flavour comes out amazingly well. We got another three brands of loose tea from Tee Geschwender yesterday since we ran out. Yum. I prefer to buy tea in little local tea shops and not from chains shops but I haven’t found a nice little shop here.

The post man also delivered this chalk board this week. We intend to plan out meals out more, so we don’t have to go shopping as often. This board shall help us and it looks pretty in the living room. We have an open kitchen, so everything I buy should somehow look nice in the living room as well. I am always open for new recipes, so if you have ideas for some meals that are quick ( = for work days) and healthy at the same time, I would love a hint! I am thinking about baking breakfast muffins and freeze them. Has any of you done that yet?

 

That's pen is liquid ink by the way. An thing from my teaching days...

Take care,

Anne