WPLUP: Christmas Crochet

Hello! Hello, and welcome to the first Winter Project Link Up Party of 2017!! As always, hosted by the lovely Jen over at Thistle Bear who very generously allows lots of other bloggers to cram up her blog page with their own projects and stories. It's a brilliant way to show how diverse and supportive the creative blogging community is when we can all muddle in together. Of course, this does mean now that we are on the final stretch of the WPLUP's and there aren't that many left to go before we can consider ourselves to be well on the way to Summer.

Those just popping in from Thistlebear probably won't recognise my current crochet WIP, which I started at the beginning of December (see introductory post here) in a quest for something rather more simple and mindless than my previous blanket, the Geometric Triangle, which was complicated and made up of lots of individual pieces. The blanket has taken something of a back seat over the festive weeks, and progress is slow but steady. I generally picked it up when my hands needed a break from the intricate and tiny stitches I have been doing on my Stitchscapes- I can't just sit still and do nothing so crochet is a good compromise. It is a really easy, granny stripe blanket and I have decided to order the colours in a regular repeat so that each colour is used evenly but I don't have to think about which one to put in next- simple, straightforward and easy are the words I am going with on this one.

Christmas time brought me lots of wool! Two bags of it in fact! All in my favourite brand and type, Stylecraft Special DK which, in my opinion, has the best range of colours and feels beautiful for an Acrylic yarn, both while crocheting with it and during use. It just seems to get softer and softer over time. The first bag contained ten balls which were in the latest colours released by Stylecraft, and some I think you will recognise from my previous blankets (the mustard returns!). In the above picture, from left to right, we have:

Top Row: * Mustard * Pistachio * Cypress * Kelly Green * Grass Green *

Bottom Row: * Fuchsia Purple * Boysenberry * Lobelia * Empire * Duck Egg *

I don't currently have any particular plans for this wool, although some of the colours- Duck Egg, Boysenberry and Fuchsia Purple- are being used in my stripey blanket so they will likely be incorporated into that one when I run out of the current balls of wool. I shall have to put my thinking cap on for the rest!

The second bag of wool I received was from The Mother, and is very exciting. She, too, reads Attic24's blog and knew all about the Moorland Blanket Crochet-A-Long, and decided to buy me the yarn pack from Wool Warehouse so that I could join in the CAL. This blanket has, not surprisingly, been inspired by the moors around where Lucy of Attic24 lives, and the colours have been chosen to reflect a landscape view of the green hills, purple heather and blue sky. The colours for this blanket (looking at the above image) are:

Top Row: * Storm Blue * Cloud Blue * Duck Egg * Sage * Mocha * 

Middle Row: * Walnut * Grape * Violet * Wisteria * Plum *

Bottom Row: * Pistachio * Lime * Cypress * Meadow * Khaki * 

The first instalment of the CAL was published yesterday (Friday 6th January) and I am planning on beginning mine this weekend. Lucy will publish 20 stripe colours a week so that everyone can follow along- if you wanted to join in there's still time- plus all of her posts will stay on her blog so you can join in whenever you want and go at your own pace. This is probably good for me as I will be attempting two blankets at the same time, plus keeping up with my stitchscaping!

I'm looking forwards to joining in with this project and seeing how everyone else does. It would be interesting to see if anyone chooses to join in with their own colour combinations which is good fun.
So then, as always, thank you if you have joined me from Thistlebear (and if you are regular readers as well), do hop on over to Jen's blog and see what everyone else in the party has been getting up to! (Just click here for the link!)