Bouquet for Bethany Blanket

Sometimes a pattern design comes out better than you could have ever imagined. this is one of those times!

Bouquet for Bethany Blanket uses the same concept as my Flight of the Dragonflies Blanket, but has the gorgeous stemmed flowers as a feature. It is worked in the round with the pattern being in written form, with added graphs and photographs.

Bouquet for Bethany in Scheepjes Whirl, Cotton Candy and Whirlette in Grapefruit

The pattern can be found on Ravelry (click here), Etsy (click here) and Lovecrafts.

Please give it some love and favourite or write a comment.The blanket is available in two different version (purchase which suits your needs). This version was made from Scheepjes Whirl and Whirlette as I showcase it with a slow colour change yarn. It can look just as fabulous using yarns such as Hobbii Twister or Lola, anything with that lovely graded colour change.

Bouquet for Bethany in Scheepjes Whirl, Cotton Candy and Whirlette in Grapefruit

My hard working pattern testers did a incredible job as usual. They have spent the last 5 weeks pouring over the pattern and finding what I like to call my Boo, Boo's! They produced some incredible blankets, all with their own originality due to colour and yarn choice. Some of their work is featured below:

Test Blanket by Carrie Skach. Made using Scheepjes Whirl in Watermelon Hellraiser and Scheepjes Whirlette in Licorice.

Test Blanket by Simone Howes. Made from Scheepjes Whirl in Licorice Yum Yum and Scheepjes Whirlette in Ice.

Test Blanket by Michelle Rose. Made from Nako Angora Luks Color 81909

Materials:

3.5mm hook

Colour 1-1x Scheepjes Whirl in Cotton Candy 1000m/1093yd

Colour 2-3x Scheepjes Whirlette in Grapefruit. 455m/497yd per ball.  Approx 1110m/1213yd of Whirlette used

Also available is Vintage Bouquet for Bethany. This is made from quality Bendigo Woollen Mill Cotton and has an embroidery feature in the border. Follow this link (click here) to read about the Vintage Version.

Now to the boring stuff! You are welcome to sell items made from this pattern, but please credit me as the designer and add a link to purchase my pattern in your sale.

Many hours of work has gone into the designing and producing of this pattern.

You are purchasing/downloading this pattern for personal use only. Please note my patterns and my images are copyright protected, please do not use my images to sell your items. No pattern or photograph may be reproduced or distributed — mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, without written permission of Auburncraft Design. Please do not copy, rewrite, or redistribute this pattern as your own or otherwise. Just because you can copy does not mean you should. Please do not resell my patterns.

Mosaic Filet Crochet Lap Blanket

If you love the Mosaic patterns and the look of Tessellated Tiles, then this will be a favourite for you.

The pattern is available on Ravelry (click here), Etsy (click here) and

Love Crochet (click here).

Mosaic Filet Lap Blanket. Made from Bendigo Woollen Mill 8 ply Dk Cotton In Parchment.

I have been staring at patterns created by Tessellated Tiles for ages. My mind has been busy working up a pattern, using the shapes that mimic these tiles. I have to say I am pretty darn excited by the results.

I love Filet Crochet! It is simple and gives a very effective finished product, which is easily achievable for most levels of crochet ability.

For some additional tips on how to keep your Filet work looking Fab-U-lous, take a look at my blog post on this topic. Here is the link: https://auburncraftcrochet.com/2019/08/16/filet-crochet-keeping-it-neat/

This pattern comes in both graph and written format. There are pictures to help along the way as well.

I used Bendigo Woollen Mill Cotton 8ply/Dk, which is super soft and beautiful to work with. My testers used various yarns with success.

Materials:

3 BendigoWoollen Mills 8ply/Dk in Parchment. 485m/530yd per ball. Approx 1455m/1591yd intotal.

3.5mm hook

Gauge:

18 Stitchesto 10cm/4”.  12 Rows to 10cm/4”.

IndividualDouble Crochet stitch height is 8mm/0.31”

Blanketheight to top of Row 20 - 17.7cm/7”

Finished Measurements:

82cm/32.2”Wide

117cm/46” High.

Some yarns that make great substitutes: (click on names for links)

Paintbox Cotton Dk

Rico Creative Cotton Dk

And for an acrylic substitute:

Stylecraft Special Dk

Below: (Pictured) are a few of my testers blankets. They look super fantastic!!! As usual a huge thank you to all those who tested for me.

Left: Amanda Corniello test blanket. Made from Premier Dk Everyday Baby yarn in Fog Grey. 3.5mm hook. Approx 1300m of yarn used.
Right: Simone Howes test blanket. Made from Bendigo Woollen Mills 4 ply/ Fingering Cotton in Wisp Grey. 3mm hook used. Approx 1250m of yarn used.

Left: Sharon C Coys Elderton test blanket. Made from Stylecraft Special Dk in white.
Right; Michelle Rose test blanket. Made from Caron one pound, worsted weight in Limeade.

Now for the Boring Stuff!!!

Many hours of work has gone into the designing and producing of this pattern, You are purchasing/downloading this pattern for personal use only. Please do not copy, rewrite, or redistribute this pattern as your own or otherwise. Please do not resell my patterns.

You are welcome to sell items made from this pattern, but please credit me as the designer and add a link to purchase my pattern in your sale.

Please note my patterns and my images are copyright protected, please do not use my images to sell your items. No pattern or photograph may be reproduced or distributed — mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, without written permission of Auburncraft Design.

This pattern has been tested by a large group of pattern testers, with varying abilities in crochet.

If you are on Ravelry, please add your finished photos as projects as I love to see your finished work.

This post may contain affiliate links.

Crochet! Go big, or go home!

Sounds great in theory! And I always have grand ideas that seem to take forever from idea to completion.

Last huge idea I had took over two years to complete, and I think I am sizing myself up for a similar experience.

I bought yarn for a large size Afghan approximately a year ago. For this one I am using Stylecraft Aran with wool. (available here). These are fabulous for a larger project as they come in these huge 400g balls.

Then I spent many hours designing a graph for it. In my head the Afghan has two picture panels. These panels have cats on them.

Sounds easy doesn't it? I got as far as putting the cats on the crochet panel via cross stitch and found I was a stitch out somewhere.

Cross-stitch on crochet is not hard. At least it isn't till you make a boo, boo and have to frog back several hours work. These cats were staring at me with their yellow eyes in a mocking manner. Something wasn't right! The cats refused to tell me what the issue was, selfish things!!!

So this has been one of those projects that gets taken out of the naughty corner for a bit, stared at, glared at, and I even begged it to show me what I was doing wrong.

For ages this horrid thing refused to answer and lay despondent in the naughty corner, cats, half done and sulking.

I worked my way through several million WIPS that had been piling up and decided it was time to take another look. It was as if a light bulb went off and all of a sudden it was clear. Why didn't I see that ages ago? After all it is pretty darn obvious!!!

I am now happily working on my Cat Afghan again and while this is going to take a bit of time to complete, it is going to be A-MAZ-ING!!!

Cross-stitch cats.

Leadlight! Sending the Testers 'Down The Rabbit Hole'

After spending forever on the design process, the Leadlight Afghan is about to begin its journey into the testers hands.

I put out the call for testers about a week ago and had quite a few testers (people crazy enough to put their hands up), respond. I have selected/forced 6 testers through a vigorous selection process. In a kind of ' survivor camp' of crochet, set of tasks to prove their worth. No, not really! They were the only ones silly/brave enough to offer to test!

The first part of the pattern will be sent out on the 28th of this month and then the fun begins. I hope for smooth sailing and happy testers! And if I only allow them out of the locked room I am keeping them in, for short breaks, I am hopeful to have the pattern successfully tested and published mid year 2019

And to my testers I strongly suggest that they use the plastic bobbins that stop the yarn from unravelling. Cos' if you are cheap like me, and only use cardboard, the tangle factor is quite large. The final Colour Work section has 96 Bobbins in play!

Major Tangles

Keep an eye out for my Leadlight Afghan mid year 2019

The Leadlight uses Stylecraft Batik Dk and Stylecraft Special Dk.  It is comprised of simple stitches and some surface slip stitch. It has three colour work sections that require Bobbins worked in the round. This spans 62 inches and looks lovely across a Queen or King Bed.

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Woo,Hoo! Leadlight Afghan Done!

Excitement plus! It may have taken me a forever from idea to completion, but it is finished.

My Leadlight Afghan is done and I can move on to one of the dozen, other designs I have partly done.

What a feeling of achievement! You know how it is when you can see that finish line looming. You only have a few more stitches to do and a few ends to sew in. You find yourself trying to work faster, and that feeling when you put that last stitch in place!

The border on this gave me some headaches. Being round I felt it had to have increases. I took three goes to get this and each time I frogged it, I considered heaving it off the balcony and pretending it did not exist. My darling husband just looked at me and stated he was amazed at my persistence. By these last few rows, I had almost 900 stitches per round.

I finally came to the realisation that, although this is round, the increases became unnecessary in this section as each bit of colour was over a section that seemed almost straight. Yes, the blanket had become so large. It ended up being 62 inches across.

When I first began this beauty, I had envisioned that it would be around 52 inches across. That was not to be.

The initial idea had sprung to life in my head after looking at Stained Glass mandalas on Pinterest. I saw this one in greens and blues and thought to myself 'This would make a great crochet afghan!'

I spent quite a while mulling around in my head, as to how I could get this idea from my head into a workable crochet blanket.

The Colourwork sections are done with bobbins, but I used cut cardboard. Yes, I am cheap and didn't want to spring for all those bobbins. Each time I did a colour section I was kicking myself for not getting the bobbins. At times I had a tangled mess and even my beloved Stella (dog) was looking at me thinking I was crazy!

Middle section of Colourwork.

I am now in the process of organising my test group. Testing will begin in a couple of weeks, and I have some very keen (or crazy) people signed up for testing.

I hope to have this pattern published by mid year 2019.

This uses Stylecraft Batik yarn (available here) and a 5mm hook.