Spring Update.

Today the natural light was good, so I got a few pictures of my WIP. First of all is my hand loom. I've only got as far as stringing it. I've used seven strands of cotton for a six bead strip. I'm unsure as to what I should make, I have toyed with the idea of a seaside inspired bracelet or a square of beads to hang off a chain. To know fully I'll just have to let the beads take me there. Wherever the journey takes me I'll be using a book I got out of the library called The Beaders Bible. It's a really good book for beginners as it has step by step guides as to how to string your loom, it even has a section on how to make a loom out of two pieces of doweling and two rubber bands! Now that would be cool.

I first got a hankering for loom beading when I saw some vintage work from the 1920's. I thought it was beautiful and skillful and I wanted to try it out. I also wanted a hand loom to do a wire weaving tutorial I had seen in a craft book called Design and Make Jewellery Using Textile Techniques. I absolutely love this book and I definitely need it on my bedside table for inspired reading before bed.

My second project is a granny square crocheted blanket I'm making as a gift. I love granny squares as they are pretty easy to do. I have tried doing straight lines in crochet by my work starts to slant. I have successfully crocheted a toddler dress but that pattern didn't have that many end of rows so for now I'm keeping it simple. I'm using up all my yarn bits and bobs but trying not to make doubles of the colours. This has been difficult because I had originally intended for the blanket to fit a double bed, this would require making approx 225 unique squares. I'm not sure making 225 unique squares would be possible unless I remortgaged the house and sent the kids to live with relatives. Thankfully there shouldn't be too many repeats on the colours as I was gifted a lot of odd ends of wool from my Grandmother in law and I can get pretty cheap yarn from a haberdashers in Newcastle Grainger Market. They usual have 100g balls of acrylic wool in impossible colours for about £1.50 and that does me fine for a project like this. For more muted colour  Wilkinson do a range of 100g acrylic baby wools for £1.79. These are often a lot better quality than the wools from the Grainger market. Here is a little pic of some of my squares.

I've used four double crochet in the corners to save on wool and I'm going to join the together with a running double crochet and hopefully they'll lie flat and neat. More pictures as I put the whole lot together.