Delivered

I finished Isabel's blanket at the beginning of March and posted if off to her on the 5th. I remember hurrying to get to the Post Office before it closed for the day.  The blankets I posted to New Zealand took about three weeks to arrive, so I hoped that Isabel would get hers in Perth, Australia, before her birthday in early April. Mmm, no. It was delivered on Thursday, more than four months after I posted it! I'm just relieved that it has been delivered.  I was beginning to wonder whether I'd best start making a replacement. Now I must post Annika's blanket. I have no confidence that it will arrive before her birthday at the end of August!

Back To The Drawingboard

I took my beret to show the craft group. The fundis gave it the thumbs down. They said they don't think it's what the judges will be looking for. They want something warmer, something made in wool. That's fine; that's exactly why I asked for advice. Now I'm looking at a pattern called Beret Cup Cake Rose by Wedinas, that I found on Ravelry. First step is to practise some techniques that I'll need for the pattern, such as crocheting into the second back loop of a stitch, and crocheting a 'front post double crochet':

The green one is much too stiff, so I will have to spin a yarn like the peach one, not like the green one. Before I begin to spin though, I had better see if I can work out how to turn the beret pattern into a pattern for a matching scarf.  

Slow!

Crocheting with plarn (plastic yarn) is a slow business. Perhaps my hook is a bit small for the job.  I had visualised making the whole shopping bag in trebles, like the bottom of the bag.

But eventually I got fed up with the slow pace of progress and decided to work a mesh pattern instead.

I probably should have found a pattern to follow because I'm struggling to get the sides of the bag even. When I was working in all trebles, the circumference seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. Now in mesh, it's getting smaller! The plarn is difficult to unravel, so I've just been compensating as I go along, which gives a rather wobbly result.

Magic Square #2

This is Robin Perfetti's second magic square. You can find a link to the pattern by clicking on this post on Tatting by the Bay. I used size 40 Coats thread for this one, it measures 14 cm across. There are a lot of lines of symmetry in here!

A Better Way

The 'magic trick' I described in my last post is not the best way to turn a plastic bag into 'plarn'. StringyDogs sent me this link to a tutorial showing a better method. I'll show it here, using a small plastic bag, though you'll get more detail by clicking on the link.

Cut the bag in strips, stopping just before the end. Then arrange the bag so that the uncut section is flat on the table:

Cut diagonally from one strip to the next, rather than straight across:

Then the bag will form one continuous strip:

Aha! Now I need to actually make something with plarn. I knitted and crocheted samples:

I'm thinking of crocheting a shopping bag. I must say it's rather noisy stuff to work with. I want an evening project, but rustling plastic is not the best accompaniment to an evening film!

Recycling Magic

There were interesting comments on my earlier post about turning plastic bags into plarn. Some referred to ways of using plarn - sleeping mats, shopping bags... Stringy Dogs commented that there is a way of cutting bags so that they form a single big circle, rather than a lot of little circles. She didn't give any details. But I remembered a 'magic trick' that we used to do as children, folding and cutting a piece of paper in such a way that it opened into a big circle that could be put over your head. Several bags and pieces of paper later, it was clear that I had forgotten how to do it! I looked up on the internet and found this post. Aha. So I cut the bottom and handles off a bag, then cut one side open, so I had a single, folded piece, and cut from this side and that:

The middle bit on each 'pair' has to be cut, (except the first and last!) otherwise you get a concertina shape:

And then it can be opened up into a big circle:

It's a bit jagged and I'm not sure it's the most practical way to cut the bag. And it's probably not what Stringy Dogs was thinking of! But there you go, it's possible.

A Lot of Error!

I'm trying to turn Anne Bruvold's  flowery triangle into a magic square. There are a lot of scraps and a lot of 'Duh, of course that won't work' moments, but I am making progress. I scribbled the diagram down years ago. Anne didn't provide a pattern but gave permission for her motif to be copied.