Arm Knitting!

Whilst surfing pinterest I came across this great link on how to arm knit. The video is really simple to follow and it's surprising how fast your knitting works up!

However, it's starting to get sunnier here, and I really couldn't get away with making a super chunky winter scarf. So I decided to make a 'summer scarf' - with two strands of DK wool instead.

It was a nightmare. It looks quite nice, but sewing it together to make a cowl was horrendous. It looks pretty bad, so I'll have to wear it with my hair down, haha!


I would definitely recommend giving arm knitting a go, though. Just make sure to do it with chunky wool! I can't wait to try it again when it starts getting a bit colder.

Enjoy!

Sneak peak... Arm Knitting!

Mention in Cheers Magazine!

I've had M.E for nearly two years now, and when I was diagnosed I was given several websites with information that would help manage my symptoms and answer any questions I had. A.Y.M.E (The Association of Young People With ME) is a website and charity that supports children and young people in the UK with M.E, and has been a life saver for me.

I go on the forum quite often and have made some friends who have the same interests as me and also some that have opened my eyes to new things! As a frequent poster on the Arts and Crafts thread my projects were picked up on by Kat, the new editor of A.Y.M.E's magazine Cheers. She e-mailed me and asked me if I would like to feature in the Crafts Corner of the magazine and I was of course happy to contribute!

You can see me in the online version of the April 2013 Cheers found here.

I'm so happy that something I've made has been good enough to be in a magazine, and I can't think of a better cause to support.

Rosie's Baby Blanket!

Now that I've finished Rosie's blanket (yay!) I thought I could show you in a bit more detail how I went about making it.

I used double knitting yarn - it doesn't really matter what type as long as it's a baby brand to make sure it's really soft and gentle! - and a 4.00mm hook. You can use a larger or smaller hook but it will make the blanket larger or smaller respectively.

My blanket is 6 x 5, and I wanted to only put flower squares on the corners to make them a bit more special. This meant I needed 26 normal granny squares and 4 flower squares.

A pattern similar to the one I used to make the granny squares can be found here. This pattern is in UK terms, but for US terms simply change any treble crochets to double crochets. In order to make them the same size as the flower squares you'll need to do a total of 4 rounds (the guide only shows 3) and then do a row of single crochets around the edge to finish.
The pattern I used to make the flower squares is here. This pattern is in US terms.

Use this picture as a guide of how many squares of each colour to make and the colours for the flowers.

Once you've made all the squares you'll need to join them. Due to the single crochet edging the best way to join them is using this method.

Now for the border. I wanted my border to be very simple as I didn't want to distract from the flowers, so I opted for doing a row of double crochets (US) in pink all around into every single crochet - when it gets to the join you can either double crochet just into the single crochets you see, or double crochet into the join (which is what I did):

As for the corners, I just made a corner roughly where the corner of the flower square was by doing a double crochet into the single crochet of the corner, ch1 then double crochet into the same stitch.
I hope that's easy to understand, but if not leave a comment and I'll be happy to do a tutorial!

Then I went round, as you can see, in white doing the same again, then finally a single crochet row in pink.

Remember the granny squares I was making here? I finally finished making them and have been going through the long process of joining them! I've used this method - it gets easier once you get the hang of it and I think it looks really effective.

I really like how it's coming together and I can't wait to finish it off!