FO: Sofa Bed Afghan

It's been six months in the making, but I am pleased to say that the sofa bed afghan is finally finished!

The actual crocheting part was done nearly two months ago; my Ravelry notes say I finished the border on the 29th September. It's taken me seven weeks to build up the enthusiasm to weave in all the ends I'd left untouched while joining!

Project: Sofa Bed Afghan

Pattern: Granny Square Afghan #LB20155 by Lion Brand (free from the Lion Brand website, but you have to register)

Yarn: Stylecraft Special Aran with Wool in Peat, Charcoal, Walnut and Blackberry

Hook: 6mm

Final Measurements: 160" x 88" (approx)

I supersized this blanket from the original design. The pattern as written gives you a blanket 39" x 52". This just wasn't going to be big enough for my sofa bed! Rather than making 6 large squares and 24 small squares, I did 15 large and 60 small. It was an epic challenge, but because it was done in small chunks, it didn't seem so bad. I also saved myself an enormous headache by leaving off the final round on every square, so I could use it to join-as-you-go, to avoid the nightmare that would have been sewing this blanket together. It also means the joins are far neater than I could have achieved otherwise, and far more secure.

Colour choice was in part decided by the room in which the blanket will live. The pattern suggests cream, grey, black and green as the contrast colour, but as the spare room is brown, I knew I had to incorporate brown to make it work. I drew inspiration from the sofa cushions I crocheted two years ago...

...and chose purple as my accent colour. I already had the charcoal in my stash left over from my hooded cowl, which led me to decide on using Stylecraft Special Aran with Wool for this blanket. It's much heavier than my rectangular granny blanket, which was crocheted from 100% acrylic DK weight yarn. I've recorded on Ravelry the amounts I used for this one, and adding it up there is just over 2kg of yarn in the sofa bed afghan!

The spur to finally finish it off and get those ends woven in came at the weekend. I had the house to myself on Saturday night and stayed up ridiculously late. Of course, the heating had gone off hours before so the bedroom was a little chilly. I couldn't be bothered to go back downstairs to get Darwin; instead I snuck across the landing and stole the blanket from the spare room. I was so warm and snuggly! I'm also quite pleased that (as you can see from the first photo) in my desire to make the blanket big enough for the double mattress in the spare room, it's also just about big enough for our king size bed!

I have a ton of leftover yarn which has been added to my Year of Projects stash; in fact, I've already finished three projects with it and am now casting about for a fourth. I've already shared Terry and Darwin, and will be showing off the third on Sunday.

Not quite a ta-da

I am so, so close to being able to show off my sofa bed afghan. After running out of yarn and therefore running out of time to get it finished ahead of a family visit last weekend, I was determined to get it done as soon as the new yarn arrived.

I crocheted like a demon, and sure enough, two days ago, I finished the epic trial that was joining all of those blocks together.

As you can see from the bottom right pic, I opted for a plain dc border in the grey. That, I finished yesterday. It is huge. Seriously huge. And I utterly failed on the weaving in the ends as I went, managing only the first section before I got too drawn into the crocheting to bother. So now I have a bazillion ends to weave in.

I've laid it out on the bed to get an idea of how it will look, and it looks amazing. But I'm not sharing it until it's properly finished. Which hopefully will give me an incentive to do so, as I really want to show it off!

Spring cleaning my WIPs

I had a bit of a tidy up yesterday, after realising my WIP list was getting out of hand. There were WIPs on my Ravelry page that hadn't seen any progress in months!

Granny Square Blanket

First to go was this blanket. What originally started as a grand plan to increase the size of a small granny square blanket I bought for the cat years ago lasted long enough to add ten rounds, before I got bored and put it aside. I left it as a WIP as I always intended to go back to it and keep adding rows, but as I've been getting lots of use out of it at its current size, I decided to give up, call it finished and move on. I still haven't woven in the ends, but meh, it's not the end of the world.

Blink

Next to face the axe was this dishcloth; I started it in January (!) and it's been sat in the above state for about six months now. I'd even stolen the needle to work on something else, and left it on a different needle to hold the live stitches. I had no inclination to return to it, and needed the placeholder needle for another project, so this has been frogged. I do still want to knit this dishcloth at some point, so I will return to the pattern again, but not for a little while.

Two more WIPs have been reclassified as hibernating, as they haven't been touched in months either.

Cherry Wrap

Cherry Wrap just needs blocking and seaming. I am hopeful that after a big house clean in anticipation of family visiting this weekend, the living room will still be clean and tidy enough for me to tackle it the weekend after. Part of the reason for stalling on this now, though, is because I'm really unsure if I'll like the finished project!

Poncho resurrection

The sheer volume of ends requiring weaving in on my poncho motifs has led to this project lying forlornly in its bag down the side of the sofa since March. As I have so many ends to weave in on the Sofa Bed Afghan,  it may be a while before I feel up to this, so this one is also now officially in time out.

Eleonora

I got frustrated with the picking up of stitches for the border, so this one has also been sadly neglected. As the weather is starting to turn, I am keen to get this one finished so I can start wearing it to work. I've relocated it from hiding in the WIP basket to staring me in the face from the WIP shelf, so hopefully I will find the enthusiasm to deal with it soon. The silly thing is, once the stitches have been picked up it will be the work of a couple of evenings to knit the border, and then it will be finished.

Cwtch Shawl

I am so close to finishing this. The trouble is, it requires a lot of concentration, as I'm in the border, so taking it anywhere is a no go. I've put it on the shelf next to Eleonora, in the hope that I will be guilted into finishing it soon.

Sofa Bed Afghan

Finally, the Sofa Bed Afghan. This was having a brief pause while I waited to get more yarn. I couldn't get it in Hobbycraft, so I had to order online which meant waiting for a few more days. The yarn has arrived now, so I can get cracking again and get this finished. I'd like to get it done by Friday, as I want it finished and on the spare bed when my visitors arrive! I'm not sure that will be achievable though, as I have now been distracted by some new projects, which I'll tell you about tomorrow...

An unexpected halt to progress

I've been motoring through the join-as-you-go part of my sofa bed afghan. At first, I did really well with weaving in the ends as I went, and the whole first panel was completed and neatly sewn in all in one evening.

Forgive the mess and the bad light, it was quite late

The seam you get with joining as you go is very neat. Rather than sewing the entire edge of the squares together, you just crochet the spaces between the dc clusters. The only really tricky part is making sure the corners of each square still look like corners!

Here's a close up of the joining. All of the black edges to these four squares have been added when joining. You can't tell the difference!

Here, I'm joining a big square to a little square. The little square (on the left) has already had it's black final round added; as I crochet the final round onto the big square (on the right), I'm replacing my chain space with a slip stitch into the chain space of the square it's joining. So simple!

This is as far as I've got, laid out on the bed it will live on to give an idea of how it will look when finished. I'm sure the eagle eyed among you will have noticed that my nightmare has come true.. I've run out of yarn! I still have the rest of this panel, and the fifth and final panel to go, plus the border.

The trouble is, this yarn only comes in 400g balls, so I am going to have loads left over. I'm hoping they have it in Hobbycraft as I will be popping in there tomorrow to buy wedding related things; otherwise I'm going to have to justify more yarn purchases as when I order from Deramores, it always seems silly to pay for postage when you could just get more yarn and have free postage. I do need more Marble Chunky for my replacement Crochet Lacy Wrap....

And so it begins...

Last night I completed the final square for the sofa bed afghan! Now all that remains is to join them all together. I purposefully left off the final round on each square, so I could join-as-you-go with the final round once all of the squares were completed. I figured this would be easier than sewing or crocheting them all together afterwards, plus leave a neater seam between each block. One quiet evening a few weeks ago, when I had the house to myself, I sat down with a spreadsheet and figured out how to do it.

Starting at the top right corner (meaning a large square was the final square to be completed) I will crochet the final round following the arrows on the diagram. Each time I pick up a new square to add, I will weave in the ends so that I don't have a mammoth task of end weaving waiting for me when I finish. This is slowing down the process somewhat, but I think it's the best option.

So far I have joined two squares! I am hoping there is enough yarn left in the charcoal ball to do all of the join-as-you-go; I have plenty left of the brown, cream and purple so if I don't have enough charcoal left for the border, I will do it in those instead.

In case you were wondering, the numbers around the outside of the join-as-you-go diagram were me trying to count how many stitches I would have on each edge, so I could figure out which border patterns would work!

WIP: Sofa bed afghan

I did mean to post this earlier on today, but utterly failed to take photos last night. I've been making solid progress on my sofa bed afghan this week; an evenings work generates at least four of the small squares, or one big one. Last night I was surprisingly productive, making one big square and two little ones.

I've got so many squares now, it's difficult to find the space to lay them out and take photographs! I'm nearly 70% of the way through now, so I've got 52 squares in total with only 23 left to make (5 big, 18 little). It occurred to me today that the one space I do have where I could lay them out to see how far I've got is on the spare bed where the afghan will eventually live.

Handily, this serves multiple purposes. First, look at all those squares! There's loads of them! Second, see how well the colours I've chosen matches the delightful brown colour scheme of our spare room. Third, it gave me the chance to check that the size I'd planned is actually big enough for the bed itself.

Here is my plan, handily colour coded to reflect the layout on the bed. I think it will be exactly the right size once I'm done, as there's an extra round of black to go on every square which will make them all about two inches bigger, plus a border round (yet to be decided exactly what border I will use, as I don't think I like the one that comes with the pattern).

I'm starting to get very excited about finishing this now. I reckon I could have the squares done in a week if I really focus on this and nothing else, although I will be taking my sock to roleplay night tonight as it is far more portable.

Birthday Princess*

My Birthday Princess tiara!

Today is my birthday, so I couldn't let that go by without acquiring some new yarn!

Not the Wollmeise I almost won on eBay last night, but close...

Now we're mostly unpacked, I'm starting to get a feel for what the rooms in this house are going to look like when they are finished. The one thing that immediately sprung to mind was that the sofa bed in the spare room looks a little dull, and needs brightening up.

Yes, the room is brown

The blanket I've currently got thrown over it is old, stained and doesn't really cover the bed properly - it's only just wide enough. I want something with a bit more personality. Luckily, I've had this Granny Square Afghan in my Ravelry queue since September last year, which I thought would be perfect. The black and grey colour scheme in the sample wouldn't go with the room, so I've opted for brown. cream and purple, which I will team with the charcoal grey I already have.

I'm hoping that crochet will be less hard on my wrist than knitting has been. I've only managed a few rows on Hypernova each evening before it's given up, but I'm only seven rows and the bind off away from finishing it now! So hopefully I will get that done tomorrow evening while at roleplay night. I'd do it tonight, but I am keen to get started on my new blanket!

*we have a tradition here, where on your birthday you get to be the birthday princess, and get to do whatever you like. This lasts until you get your presents, which for me in previous years has sometimes led to me being the birthday princess for months, as Jamie wasn't always in a position to get me something. This year I've had my present from Jamie already, so I don't get to be the princess for longer than today and on Saturday!

WIP Wednesday 3

Another Wednesday already! I am happy to report I have a new WIP to show you this week, hopefully to make up for any lack of progress on the amigurumi front.

Lets start with the WIPs from last week:

Granny Rectangle

No pics of this one today, as it doesn't really look that different to last week. I've done maybe four more rounds since last Wednesday (mostly at the end of last week), and I'm starting to look like I'm going to run out of some of the colours soon. So a trip to Hobbycraft will be in order at some point this week!

Clown Fish

I'm afraid I have to report no further progress on the clown fish. I did try, but I have to admit the pattern is defeating me. I just can't get the dorsal fin to work! I think I know what the problem is, I just need to wait until I'm not likely to throw it across the room in frustration again.

and finally.... the new WIP for the week:

Tiramisu Baby Blanket

This week I learned another friend was expecting a baby. That makes three babies due between now and August. I'd best get busy! I already had a couple of items in my Ravelry queue. The Lion Brand hooded baby blanket is one, but I want to use Sirdar Supersoft Aran for that, which means a trip to Jacksons, where they sell it quite cheaply. I needed things I could start immediately, and use the pale yellow Top Value DK I was given for Christmas.

The Tiramisu blanket pattern (Ravelry pattern link here) looks really cute in all the FO pics on the site, plus it's free, which is always a bonus (don't think I've paid for a pattern yet!). However, a quick glance over it showed me straight away that my yarn was not the same as the recommended, so a test swatch was definately needed:

After a couple of goes, and a bit of a head scratch as I worked out the maths behind the pattern and how to scale it, I finally settled on chaining 121 stitches instead of 91, with a 6mm hook. The rest should follow on from that neatly enough.

After a couple of days working on it, it now looks like this:

A whole nine inches done. Out of 32, so I've a bit to go yet before I can get excited about the border! I'm not sure what colour ribbon to go for, although of the three babies it could go to, one is definately a girl and one is definately a boy, so I could go blue or pink and get away with it. Guess I'll see what's in the shop when I go to get it.

That's all my WIPs this week, head over to Tami's Amis to see the others!

WIP Wednesday

Wednesday already! It doesn't feel like a week has gone by since I last posted my WIPs; bank holidays do such funny things to one's perception of time.

So, not much progress made on my amigurumi this week (read: no progress at all), but I have been flying through the granny rectangle afghan.

When I posted pics of it last week, I was working on round 11 (2nd blue round). Last night, when I put it down before bed, I had just started round 29 (4th purple round). It grows very quickly indeed!

I'd say I'm not quite halfway through now - I want it to be big enough that it covers the sofa entirely, so that me and J can snuggle underneath it quite comfortably when we watch TV. It's a lovely project to work on in the cold weather, though, as it keeps me very warm when it's all piled up on my lap!

That's it for my WIP Wednesday, but head on over to Tami's Amis to see lots more!

Wednesday is for Crochet blogging

For my first foray into blogging about my all-consuming crochet habit, I present:

So the point here is to post up every Wednesday with my current works-in-progress. Happily, I have three to share today.

First up, a small amigurumi Tiger, from this free pattern on the Lily Sugar'n Cream website. I started this on the 18th December, the start of my drive to use up my bright orange Sirdar Bonus DK yarn (more on that later). I finished all of the crocheting, stuffing, sewing together in one evening. But I didn't have beads for eyes, and it was too late by the time I was done to be embroidering on the face. So it has been put to one side, and ignored in favour of other projects.

I've got as far as adding black beads for eyes, but not the nose/mouth/whiskers bit. Hopefully he'll turn up in a FO Friday post before too long!

Secondly, my clown fish amigurumi, from this free pattern on Ravelry. I'm sure you'll notice again that this is a project using predominantly bright orange yarn! I'm probably about halfway through, having completed the body and eyes, I just have many fins to make and attach.

As you can see, at the moment it looks more like a demented Vermicious Knid. I started this on the 20th December, but got annoyed with the pattern for the fins, so put it to one side and haven't picked it up again yet.

Lastly, my current favourite project, although I intended it for a fall-back project to do when I didn't have any amigurumi to work on. But I've been working on it almost non stop since I started it! It's a rectangular granny square, using this pattern from fellow blogger Erin Lindsey.

No bright orange in this one! But only the green and purple are new yarns for this project, all of the other colours were needed for my Christmas gift to the future MiL, a holiday penguin (free pattern from FreshStitches.com).

So why am I desperately using up bright orange yarn, I hear you cry. Quite simply, because I have too much of it! I bought it for my tiger striped starghan project, which was a gift for a friend's new baby:

Now before buying the yarn for this project, I searched high and low through all the FOs listed for the pattern on Ravelry, trying to get an idea of how much yarn I might need. Not helped by the fact I was substituting the Sirdar Bonus DK for the recommended Red Heart Sport Baby Pompadour yarn (my first real foray into substituting yarn properly). I got really frustrated because the pattern simply states "keep going until it's big enough for you", and all the FOs on Ravelry don't have the details of how much yarn was used, or how big the finished item is. So I had to wing it.

I really had no idea how much I would need, but reasoning that my white stripes were thinner than the orange and black I got less white than black. In total I bought three skeins of black, three of orange and two white. As you can see from the finished project on Ravelry, I used up just over one of the white and orange, and about a skein and a half of black. White and black leftovers didn't bother me, but what the heck was I going to do with pretty much two whole skeins of bright orange acrylic!

Luckily it didn't take too long searching the pattern database to find a few amigurumi projects to use up the yarn with. I've still got loads left, so I may have to make a few more orange things and give them away (otherwise I'll be drowning in small cute animals, which wouldn't be good).

The trouble with projects to use up yarn, though, is you end up having to buy more yarn because you need a different colour to finish something off, and then you're left with a whole new skein of yarn to use up somehow! It's how I've ended up doing my granny rectangle. I had to buy red and yellow and pale blue to make Howie the Penguin (I didn't think the orange would work on the beak and feet), so while I was in the shop getting those I picked up the red and purple, knowing I already had the granny rectangle in my pattern queue that I could use them on. Hopefully, I will be able to finish off that blanket at a point where I have very little of the yarns left, so I don't end up in this position again!

So there you go. Happy WIP Wednesday!