Tag Archives: granny square

My Week, and Paris!

It has been a quiet week for me on the crochet front.  I finished a major secret project last week after weeks of work, so this week I’ve been taking it easy.  I am working on a very cool project – a faux taxidermy rhino head for a custom order and I do love the way it’s all coming together.  Hopefully I’ll finish that over the weekend and be able to show you the result next week!

Otherwise, my family and I spent the weekend in Paris!  I’ve been to Paris a few times now, and it really is one of the more beautiful cities in the world.  Not the most beautiful; it’s tough to beat Edinburgh or Rome in my opinion, but it is spectacular, there’s no denying it.

We visited the Eiffel Tower (of course) and did a bit of crowd watching.  Those queues are incredible.  There’s no attraction on earth that you need to book in advance for more than The Eiffel Tower.  At just after 10am the queues were already hours long, so we decided not to climb.  Well, there was no decision really.  If we wanted to see anything else aside from the person in the queue in front’s backpack for the day, then waiting and waiting to climb wasn’t an option!

We also visited Versaille.  And man.  Every tourist on earth was there at the same time.  The interior of the palace was probably the most stressful and unpleasant tourist experiences of my entire life.  Now, I’ve been to quite a few of the big touristy places on this planet, and this was just g0d-awful.  Apparently there was a bedroom or two, and somehow I managed to miss the room where they signed the Treaty of Versaille.  The gardens were an entirely different matter altogether.   Massive, sprawling and not crowded at all.  There were obviously thousands upon thousands of people there, but it was easy to find a quiet nook and pretend you were alone on earth.  And the tourist/audioguide/tourgroup bubble.  Seriously people!  You can visit places without being an arsehole while you’re there.

So that evening we had well and truly earned our fabulous cheese and wine.  I couldn’t tell you what they were any more, but there was a cheddar that I could have sworn was an aged gouda from North Holland!  My friend Emma is the expert, so I left the choosing to her and I just gobbled it all up as quick as I could!

Then further on the food front, I put in an order with my friend Lori from Southern Charm Cupcakes for some of her amazing caramels and chocolates.

Lori’s specialty has fast become Fleur de Sel caramels and she makes the best fleur de sel caramel chocolate you have ever seen in your entire life.  If you put a block of Godiva and a block of Lori’s chocolate in front of me, I’d go for Lori’s every.single.time.  So if you live in the Netherlands, Lori ships!!!!!  I’ve had to freeze the caramels to make sure I don’t gobble them all up at once.

And then there’s crochet.  I posted a tutorial for the granny square I designed on holidays, which is really simple and works up within ten minutes.

This weekend I’m hoping to finish a pattern I’ve been working on, and also the rhino.  Other than that, I’m going to take time for myself to work on strategies I’m going to implement for the Unstoppable program that kicked off this week!

How’s your week?

Ombre Addict – Camera Strap

This ombre look is just the best. It started with me wanting that ombre hair effect, and it’s been slowly infiltrating my crochet designs more and more. The Bucketful of Sunshine hat is a great example. And so is Miniman’s Nursing Necklace.

Once I had finished The Miniman I noticed that I had a lot of yarn left over. Usually this wouldn’t bother me as there is always another project, but it seems that my yarn cupboard is completely full of left over yarn that will hopefully come in handy one day, so I just wanted to use it straight away, instead of effectively wasting it. And as I was on holiday I thought I would make a great holiday accessory – a camera strap!

As my photographer friend Rudi says, why give Canon free advertising? I’d been wanting to make one for ages, but hadn’t had the yarnspiration, but now with this leftover Cotton 8 from Scheepjes in ombre shades, I could really go to town!

Firstly though, I had to start with a square. But I had no internet on holiday, and hadn’t taken any pattern books with me to the south of France, so necessity being the mother of invention, I designed one!

Ombre Mini Granny square by @missneriss. Check the free photo tutorial at missneriss.com

I started with a circle, then turned it into a square and changed colour on each round. I thought that it would be a great colour combo for my husband (as it’s his camera and I’m not sure if he would really enjoy a hot pink or rainbow strap) so I made a bunch of them. Thirteen, infact. The finished square is 5.5×5.5cm (unblocked) and I single crocheted them all together in a row. On the back I made solid squares and joined those together, starting with the lightest blue at the outer ends and the darkest blue in the middle (so if it’s a really hot day the manly sweat won’t discolour the strap).

Mini Granny square by @missneriss. Check the free photo tutorial at missneriss.com

It was a great project to work on in the car on the way back – it distracted me from the mad French freeways!  And when I arrived home, my daughter was for once, very happy to model it for me!

Ombre Mini Granny square camera strap by @missneriss. Check the free photo tutorial at missneriss.com

Ombre Mini Granny square camera strap by @missneriss. Check the free photo tutorial at missneriss.com

Ombre Mini Granny square camera strap by @missneriss. Check the free photo tutorial at missneriss.com

Ombre Mini Granny square camera strap by @missneriss. Check the free photo tutorial at missneriss.com

Come back in a few days, I’ll have a tutorial of the square for you.

Ombre Mini Granny square camera strap by @missneriss. Check the free photo tutorial at missneriss.com

How a Granny Became a Hexie

A couple of months ago Simply Crochet magazine launched a brand new Granny Square app which I discovered via creJJtion on Instagram and although I don’t often make Grannies – as you know, I hate weaving in ends and changing colours on each round creates a tonne of ends – I loved the pics people were sharing using the #GrannySquareMonday and #SimplyCrochetApp hashtags that I wanted to join the fun!

Of course, it all went wrong right from the start! I decided to begin with Granny Audrey as she was the prettiest so far and off I went, following the chart. Or so I thought! Towards the end I started scratching my head wondering why it wasn’t looking like the picture until it hit me – I can’t count! Instead of creating a Granny Audrey, Hexie Audrey was born instead!

I decided that I may as well run with it and added a border round so I at least had something to show for the effort before going back to the chart and actually reading the instructions and counting my stitches instead of acting like the proverbial bull in a china shop.
Granny and Hexie Audrey on missneriss.com - free chart
But at the end of the day, I have to say that I like Hexie Audrey better than Granny!

So just because I love the end result so much, I’ve created a chart of the pattern for you. Bear with me, chart making is NOT my forte, and I don’t have any fancy software to do it (yet), so my hand drawn version will just have to do.

Chart for the Granny Hexie on missneriss.com

Don’t forget to check out Granny Audrey on the Simply Crochet Granny app and download the free weekly squares. And then you must share them on Instagram! You can follow me here