This winter I am joining Jennifer from Thistlebear, in her link party, where bloggers post their current crafty makes, and encourage each other through the long evenings of winter with lots of hand crafted beauty.
The project I would like to share this month is a crocheted scarf I am making to enter in to this year's Dalmally Show.
I am not an avid crocheter, nor a skilled one, but I enjoy making an occasional piece. My Nana taught me how to make a Granny Square when I was twelve; she had been taught how to do this some weeks before at her W.R.I. meeting, and kindly passed on her knowledge to me. I proceeded to make a Granny Squares pram blanket for my new baby brother in rather scratchy purple and cream wool. It is still in existence some 40 years later (in fact it is currently in my loft)
My crocheting career then lay fallow until minimally revived a few years ago, when I made another baby blanket (stripes this time), and I have made several other small pieces since then, so when I saw that a crocheted scarf was one of the competitions for the Dalmally Show this year, I dusted off my crochet hook and started looking for a suitable pattern from here .
The name of the pattern is Land Girl Scarf. I considered the name very evocative, and also loved the names and shades of the wool used, all of which are place names in glorious Yorkshire, where Derek and I spent many happy holidays before the boys were born.
The original colours were:
Tan: 'Thirsk'
Green: 'Richmond'
Turquoise: 'Bedale'
Brown: 'Helmsley'
Thirsk is a gorgeous market town, but despite this, I chose to change the tan colour to grey (an equally delightful 'Skipton'), as the colour tan sets my teeth on edge.
The scarf is worked in a ripple pattern. I used ripple pattern I had used before, (from this book) as opposed to that specified in the pattern, as I am not a wonderfully confident crocheter, and preferred to use a familiar pattern. It is based on multiples of five, and gives a pleasingly uniform wave.
I particularly like the stepped colour change, I think this gives the scarf an old fashioned feel which I like. I imagine a beret worked in the same stripe pattern would be adorable; not that I am going to attempt one, but it would be very 'Land Girl'.
This is the scarf about half way finished. I am not looking forward to sewing in all the ends, but nor am I motivated to sew them in as I go along. An absorbing audio book and a big mug of tea will see me through that particular afternoon!
The original pattern has two plump pom poms, one on each end, and they will be essential to the finished appearance. I made pom poms a lot as a child, using two rings cut out of cardboard, but they seem to have become very professional in recent years, with hardly a strand out of place. Not sure I will be able to achieve such a level of perfection with mine when the time comes.
Here is the wool label, for those who like the look of the wool. The colours are beautiful, vibrant, yet soft.
I still have sixty two rows to go, and am steadily ticking them off my list. Each row takes around four minutes. Now that Christmas is over, and life is settling back in to more of a routine, I should have the scarf finished reasonably soon, though I do have several other projects tugging at my time and interest, but that's a story for another time.
Do remember to pop over to Jennifer's blog, and see what all the other Winter Link Party crafters are up to this month.
