Thrilling Craft Adventure Thursday Meme #3

Hello! Sorry this is a bit late in the day, but I've only just taken the necessary photographs. The past two weeks have been fun ones. I finished this cross stitch picture for a fund raiser at work. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo, which is why you've got one of the kit. Or not. I can't remember the name of the kit. Moving on....

I've been carrying on with the baby hoodie I'm currently knitting. Because it is a raglan hoodie (a style of knitting the sleeves (I think...)), the front and the back look the same.

Without looking at the pattern (which I haven't for 3-5 days...), I can't tell you whether this is the front or the back!

I've knitted one whole sleeve....

...and I'm part way through knitting the other.

On Monday I decided to give crochet another go. It's something I'd love to be able to do. I have since realised that I probably will use it to make cute things (especially amigurumi!) and blankets. I was working through a granny square for an afghan. I had to restart several times. I then got rather confused on the pattern (I'm a total novice). After several attempts, I decided to search online for help. I found a few granny square tutorials with photos! And videos too. I needed the video to understand one step, but after several attempts I made my first square! I was too scared to change colours, but I then realised I could make a spring shawl with some granny squares. Here's two of the colour combinations I've got so far. (I don't have photos for my earlier attempts).

Depending on the final product, the pattern of the squares could look like this

Then there's the blanket for my friend. Originally it was going to be a lace shawl. However, I'm already knitting a lace tablecloth for my parents as a present. It is an interesting progress. It turns out I can get quite frustrated with lace knitting. I think it'll get easier with practice. I'd rather not have two lace projects on the go at once, so, with the success of my granny squares I thought I'd attempt a granny square blanket. For those I'd just do one large square, continuing until I run out of yarn. I have 4 balls of yarn, and there are lots of metres in those balls because it is lace-weight yarn. I'd like to only use 2 balls, so I can knit one for myself. It doesn't look very big yet, but lace always gets bigger once you've blocked it (dampen it then stretch it to the appropriate size), so I'm not too worried at the moment. I spent 2 hours getting this right this afternoon - it took a couple of attempts to get it right because I hadn't used laceweight yarn for crochet before.

I know I've used a bit of artist license in a few parts - bascially I went wrong on a few places! I think you can all see that on the left side of the middle there's quite a big hole. I'm not sure what I did/didn't do. It won't matter though. It looks ok to me! My friend is a fellow knitter, so I know she won't mind if there are extra large holes in a few areas. I'll try and plot my progress in future blog posts.

I've also started a tapestry cross stitch cushion kit. I haven't got a photo yet - but it's great fun. It's a totally different medium to what I'm used to - it's bigger, thicker, and I'm still getting used to the different feel of sewing it. I hope to have photos of my progress later on.

Before I forget, the crochet spring shawl will only be worked on Wednesdays. Wednesdays are my days off, which I use to relax and have a total break. That's when I'll do craft for myself. All the other days are for working on presents.

I hope you've enjoyed this week's meme, and hopefully I'll be back in two weeks with more progress on my current projects (and the hoodie should be finished).