darling ragdoll

One of the ladies of one of my favorite crochet Facebook groups, Scout, posted a gorgeous picture of her latest project and I immediately fell in love with her bunny ragdoll.  I immediately purchased the pattern, from a la Sascha, for $3.99 and started my own pink and green bunny… Not that I am a fan of that color combination but because I know a little girl who is …

As you know I am not the cleverest crocheteuse and I often encounter challenges.  This pattern triggered some frustrations but the pattern-owner Sascha was super responsive and helpful. So with a few emails back and forth from The Netherlands and the kind and dedicated help – via Messenger – from Scout from Scotland for the first row of the body, I realized my first ragdoll.  I cannot thank those two ladies enough.  Scout even got her husband to hold the camera while she was showing me the how-to on a short video … as clearly I got it soooo wrong too many times that she had no other choice!

Here is a wonderful video from Sascha.  This video won’t help but it’s very nicely filmed… Bravo to Sascha!

Sascha did hers with DK weight yarn Stone Washed from Scheepjes in grey (230m) and white (130m) | hook 3mm |  safety eyes 15mm and a nose of 15mm.

Scout used the Scheepjes DK Stone Washed (the XL would make a huge rabbit of 66 cm from tip to toe) with a 4 mm hook  | 21 mm eyes and a 18 mm nose.

I worked with what I had: DK Special by Stylecraft in Candy Floss #1130 and Spring Green #1316 with a 4.5 mm hook.  I found 18-mm eyes [2 per bag] and noses [6 per bag] at Joann Fabrics [they didn’t have any at Michaels].

I made her a little necklace in single crochet to hide my no-so-nice head stitches and a tricolor flower.

Interested in a ragdoll cat?  A bear?

Scout’s ragdoll

Cotton Field, a blanket for Kaidan

After the big failure of Kaidan’s first blanket [that he never received], I had to give it another shot.  Once again, I had seen a beautiful pattern from Crochet Caché and decided to go cotton.   Well cotton, as previously noticed with my potholders, is not as popular as you would think in dear Atlanta.  To my huge surprise, Hobby Lobby has a pretty decent selection.  After spending ages in the dedicated aisle, I picked ‘I love this cotton!’ [made in Turkey] in skeins of 100 gr.

I always have a hard time picking the colors.  But pretty quickly, I decided for turquoise (#70), bright citrus (#100), white (#6) and dark denim (#306).

I started this much more easier project that I planned to wrap up in a short time.  Well, poor Kaidan, the job got interrupted.  Again.  This time, because of a left arm issue: a crochet-elbow and let’s diagnose it as the beginning of a frozen shoulder [trust me, it was more complicated than that].

After repair, I went back to action and finished Kaidan’s blanket.  And don’t ask me why I called it Cotton Field.

Details for Cotton Field

• 163 ch wide (about 112 cm)
• 5.5 mm hook
• “I love this cotton!” from Hobby Lobby | turquoise (#70), bright citrus (#100), white (#6) and dark denim (#306)
• Based on a pattern from Crochet Caché: Peaceful Stripes Baby Blanket Crochet Pattern – Video tutorial
• My stitches: back loop DC but I did add a line of Slip Stitch to remove a bit of the elasticity.

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complete disaster

For Kaidan, I had found this patchwork blanket by Bernat Design Studio on Ravelry…  All excited about this new venture,  I went to a small local shop – Needle Nook – to purchase the same colors as showed on the picture.  Well good luck with that … Instead, I came back home with a small fortune of Plymouth Yarn in green, grey and cream.  A lovely combination for a little boy.

Playing around, I first struggled to place the colors in the right sequence. Luckily, Arno came to the rescue and, even draw the pattern on a piece of paper for future use.

Well as easy as it seemed,  this project became quickly a nightmare for the beginner I was.

At the time, I was still at my early stages of crochet.  My art was pretty uneven, the number of requested stitches were usually inaccurate.  And creating exactly the same squares was not my cup of tea.  After a few attempts of following the instructions, I decided to work by row of squares and to make it my ‘own’ by joining them with a ‘spike‘ stitch.  At the end, I would only have to join the lenght of the stripes to make the blanket.

To add to the pain, my work having been interrupted numerous times and, with some memory loss, I started to use different hooks (3) for this project. The result turned into a true catastrophe.  Disappointed and frustrated, as there was no way for me to start over, I decided to turn the stripes into scarves (see other blog post on that topic).

Anatomy of the disaster

• hook (supposed to be a 10 mm)
• Plymouth yard ‘Encore Chunky’ 75% acrylic, 25% wool | skein 100 gr/143 yards
• Colors: green (#3335), grey (#0256) and cream (#0389)