Natural Crochet Cushion

I had a shabby old crochet cushion on my chair and it was in desperate need of replacement.  

I very rarely buy cushions they are the simplest thing ever to make. 
Using some lovely bluefaced Leicester wool I set to.  

The wool I had was 4 ply which was way too flimsy for my needs so I caked two balls together to make double thickness wool to work with and I used a 4.5mm hook.
  
The pattern I used was this Round Cushion Cover from the Cute and Easy Crochet book by Nikki Trench but I was not entirely happy with my interpretation of it.

You can make out the ridge on this one at each round change and I don’t like it.  As neat as I am with my joins it’s rarely invisible and with this being all one colour I think it stands out even more.  

I frogged it several times but eventually I just had a word with myself and went with it.  This is never going to be on show anyway as it is the back.

For the front I went for a continuous spiral, using a stitch marker to mark my row start I just continued on and on making one large spiral.  

I based the pattern on the other one for the quantity of increases on the rows and it worked a treat.  This little thing used up three full balls of 50g 4 ply (doubled up).  For the scallop border I used part of a little ball of Jamiesons spindrift and I like the contrast.

This chair is in daily use so I couldn't fuss it up with a flower in the middle as it would just get squished, besides I really like the simplicity of the spiral shape and don’t want to hide that.

I took the zip out of the old broken cushion cover and added it to this one, as I need to be able to remove my cushion covers.

 (see that nasty ridge, grrr)
 To add the zip to crochet; a simple mattress stitch along each edge of the zip in the same wool gives a nice edge to join knit or crochet work to.  I added a row of treble crochet around the rest of the cushion to keep the shape right with the zip in there and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

It’s nice to see these two together, one knit, one crochet, one square, one round both in the same wool but such a different effect.

How much can one woman rant about a cushion?

I'm done!

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Pins and Needles 2013

This year Pins and Needles (an Initial J Event) was held the weekend before last at Newcastle Race Course.

This is an event that I always attend and tend to stock up on good local produce. This year there were lots and lots of papercraft exhibitors and the sewing and knitting folks were in the minority.  With the event being called Pins and Needles and having a quilting exhibition, and needlework exhibition on show I was a little disappointed not to have more relevant stalls.  I did however come across a new exhibitor who was selling some delicious local wool Natural Knits, The Knitting Gift Shop. 

They have an online shop and you can find them here.

I did snaffle up a few bits from Woolaballoo, a lovely wool supplier from Hexham and I have made myself a very quick neck warmer (crap photos but it's more mustard than green in real life).   I am not the fastest knitter and I managed to knit this up one evening after work (part of the cost went to children in need too).

How cool is the huge button, I swapped the button from the kit with this one which I bought from The Knitting Gift Shop, the lady tells me her husband made these from the leg of an old chair.

This year one of the workshops was Tunisian Crochet, this is something I was really interested in.  I can knit and crochet but this is a technique I have never tried before, so I signed up.

Its a bit odd if you are used to crochet.  In traditional crochet, you work a row of stitches, and the row is then complete. At that point, you turn the work and move on to the next row.  Tunisian crochet is different, each row is a two-step process, and you never have a need to turn the work.  I got myself a bit confused at the end of each row but with a bit of practice and a lovely helpful teacher, I nailed it (I did frog it and start again when I got home and got it right).

If you are interested there are loads of good YouTube tutorials showing how it is done the tool is a cross between a knitting needle and a crochet hook. The finished article is very thick it is like double thickness crochet, if you need this dense finish Tunisian may be the way forward.  As a result of this thickness, the Tunisian uses up lots of wool, I can’t imagine making a full size blanket in this way if for no other reason than the excessive cost of the wool but I hope to make a cushion cover sized piece from patchwork Tunisian squares in the future.  I will add that to my ever growing list of things I want to make.

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