Typecast

If you follow my twitter feed you'll see that it has recently been peppered with references to crochet and knitting. I have been trying out a little book that Black Sheep Wools sent to me.  It is part of a " Twenty To Make... " series and contains 20 different granny squares with 8 mini-projects and has really easy to follow instructions if you're a beginner like me.  As long as you can crochet a double and a treble stitch and have a bag of wool scraps (what hooker doesn't?) then you should be able to follow the patterns (instructions are given for the US hookers too).  Here's a couple of the granny squares I've done from the book compared to a traditional granny that I had already made.  They were loads easier than I thought they would be to complete and didn't take too much time. Crochet Granny Squares - £4.99 from Black Sheep Wools After completing my first crochet project - an afghan throw - I sold my third born,  bought more ya...

I've been banging on about 'finding the crafter within' again recently and may have mentioned it a few times here * cough * Silent Sunday * ahem * Mother of Purl * cough * but, for once in my life, I've actually finished a few projects. I mentioned that the next one would be a BIG project as I'd seen the pattern for a poncho that looked a bit unusual ( no Clint Eastwood jokes, purleeeeeese ).  Because I am me, I decided to use needles and wool that I already had so I wasn't too sure how it would turn out.  What do you think? As I've changed the pattern slightly I'll tell you what I did. The yarn recommended (a tweedy, rough type yarn) wasn't available so I used double chunky because it was on offer at the market.  I only used one strand of wool instead of two as the original pattern suggests.  The make of the wool I used is Byzantium and I used 4 x 200g balls which cost £3.49 each.  I used size 8 needles and a 5mm cable...