Bestest Yarn Ever

Very pleased with how my latest batch of handspun turned out. I think this is my best yarn to-date. (You can vote for it here if you are so inclined. Just click the 'love' button below the post. Be sure to check out the other great yarns. You can vote for as many as you like.) It's 256 yards of super soft 3-ply BLF (Blue Faced Leicester) from All Spun Up's Etsy shop. Loved spinning it; loved plying it; going to love making a scarf from it very soon.

I also finished the sample for my August crochet block-a-month class. This is the Wool Eater Blanket (Ravelry link). I've wanted to make this for awhile and finally just sat down and did it. There are some really beautiful examples on Ravelry (click the link above, then click on the "63 Projects" tab.)

The block is worked from the center like a granny square, using a modified Katherine Wheel stitch. Very easy to do; the hardest part was remembering to put the 2 chain stitches after each corner turn. Great way to use up stash without getting bored out of your mind.

FO'd Purse

I love Carol Ventura's work (check out her gallery on Ravelry) and have wanted to try tapestry crochet for awhile, but I never quite got around to it. Last night I was looking for a new project for my June block-a-month class (we're branching out from just squares) and came across Carol's felted amulet bag.

A little searching, a little planning and I came up with this - a cat and blocks purse using the kitty graph* on Carol's site. It took me a little less than 5 hours to complete - including weaving in the tails (pun intended) - using worsted weight wool left over from other projects and an "I" crochet hook. I think it's cute and a good intro to tapestry crochet. Now I need to find the pattern for Carol's flying pigs purse, my absolute favorite, which seems to have disappeared from the innerwebs.
*Carol kindly gives permission to use the kitty purse pattern for teaching purposes, with certain restrictions.

Done With CBAM

Until May, anyway. I finished the last two squares for my block-a-month class today. Both are my own design and teach specific concepts.

February's block could be named 'things that go bump in your crochet' - popcorns, bobbles (dc and sc) and clusters. It's hard to see the design; wish I'd had time to take outdoor photos before I took this one to the shop today.

This block gave me fits the entire time I was making it; I must have frogged it four or five times before I got it to a point that was acceptable. I may play around with the pattern again before I teach this one.
April's block is Intarsia, which comes from the Italian word meaning 'inlay'. While researching this one, I found that the difference - one of them anyway - between Intarsia and Fair Isle is that with Intarsia the yarn isn't carried across the blocks. It's held on bobbins (which I knew) that hang down the back of your work. Fair Isle is stranded; the unused yarn is carried loosely on the wrong side, with floats of 4 to 5 stitches at a time. The reverse side of Fair Isle looks very messy to me; Intarsia is nice and neat. I used MS Excel to design this block. Nice to know I can use my pre-retirement training for something important - like crochet.

FO's One and Two

These are for my crochet block-a-month classes, probably in March and April. I finished them before the New Year but I'm counting them as 2009 FO's since that's when I'm teaching them (and I didn't get them photo'd, Rav'd and blog'd until now.)
I think Picot Lace, based on a stitch from MyPicot.com, would make a great shawl or wrap. It's very elegant-looking; the picots remind me of little crowns.Bowtie, from Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet, would be cute as a baby blanket; I'd do it in pastels, changing colors at the start of each 'tie'.

The second and next-to-last bows in the sample are in half-double crochet - the rest is all single crochet - to show what it would look like. As much as I dislike a project that's all sc, I do like those ties better than the hdc ones. If - when? - I make this into a baby blanket, I'd use a nice, fat yarn and a really big hook. Fast, easy, enough variety to keep it interesting; perfect project for gifting.

On another note, MyPicot.com is a fairly new-to-me site with some unusual crochet stitch patterns. They have a knitting side too, but I haven't checked that out. The stitches are shown as diagrams, no text, which can get very interesting on the more complex patterns. Beautiful stitch patterns, easy to navigate site; well worth checking out.