Yarn delivery from Eden Cottage Yarns

Earlier today I was really excited to come home from my grocery shop and find my order from Eden Cottage Yarns had arrived! The shopping was all flung to one side as I tore open the outer packaging straight away. Inside the wool had been carefully wrapped up in brown paper bags with the pretty Eden Cottage Yarns logo - all snug and perfect!

On opening further, I immediately fell in love with the baby alpaca wool - it is incredibly soft and delicate. I ordered the yarn because I plan to use it for the #BackToSchoolSweaterCal starting this Saturday. This CAL (short for crochet-along) has been organised by Tamara (craftyescapism.com) and Helen (makingatnumber14.blogspot.co.uk) and is a great way to encourage everyone to crochet a sweater (jumper) or cardigan between now and Christmas. A blog hop has been organised to accompany the CAL and it will take you on a journey via the participants blogs, finding out about all sorts of differnt aspects of garment making, starting with Tamara on Saturday (see link above). Helen approached me back in early summer, asking if I would like to be involved with this project and of course I was super keen to hop on board!! I will be writing 2 blog posts: the first in October will be all about designing a garment and my second will be in November with an update on my personal crocheted sweater progress.

For the CAL, I decided that I wanted to create a warm, winter version of my own design - Summer Cardigan. As well as changing the yarn from summery cotton to cosy alpaca I will be altering the fit to make it a more close fitting, snug cardigan. I have chosen Eden Cottage Yarns Whitfell DK which is a beautifully soft baby alpaca yarn and I can't wait to get started! The colours will be totally different too - the main colour will be dark brown "Ebony" and the colourful yoke will be in "Laburnum", "Fuchsia" and "Natural". My first step will be to work up a swatch and see how the yarn behaves in comparison with my original cotton design. From this point I will calculate my guage and sizing and the rest should fall into place ...

Anyone else joining in this CAL? Leave a comment below if you are!

Happy hooking,

Marta xx

The 100 Day Project: 100 granny squares in 100 days

Back in July I felt the urge to begin a new granny square blanket but at the same time I didn't feel like starting a new one that would end up laying around in the corner of the room for the next 6 months (or longer!) while I occassionally added the odd square to the pile. I remebered seeing the hashtag #the100dayproject on Instagram and decided to challenge myself to make 100 granny squares in 100 days!

The main inspiration for this blanket came from @jen_olivarez who challenged herself to create an embroidered self portrait in 100 days. The stitches in her finished portrait are so tiny and intricate - I absolutely loved watching it grow! If you scroll down her Instagram gallery you will find the images - they are definitely worth a look!

All my squares are following the same pattern: Jan Eaton's Edwardian Fancy from her book 200 Crochet Blocks. This book is an amazing source of granny square inspiration for me, I would recommend it to anyone that wants to move on from basic granny squares. The yarn is odds and ends from my leftover balls of DK wool. There's a mix of alpaca, merino, BFL and vintage wool - as long as it is pure wool, it's in! 

Today is Day 24 and I have 24 squares! Hooray! Every day I am posting the finished square to my Instagram account and I love how the squares are looking dotted around my other pictures. Last week was a very hectic week for me and although I managed to crochet all the squares I was too busy to stop and take photos so I ended up a few days off, but I am all caught up now and back on track.

Yesterday I made a start on some joining and I am really happy with how the squares are sitting together. I am using a double crochet join on the reverse side, working through the back loops only. Over the years I have settled on this as my preferred joining method because it is easy to do and doesn't cut off as much of the final round from the squares as some other methods.

Today is Granny Square Day - an annual event to celebrate the iconic granny square! The idea is for everyone to post a close up image of a granny square and add the hashtag #grannysqaureday2017. When viewed all together the hashtag gallery should look like one big virtual crocheted blanket!

Happy Granny Square Day!

Marta xx