More Colour Pops

I'm still enjoying exploring the possibilities of my Colour Pop technique which combines lots of colours and some serious texture, two of my favourite things. The first two patterns were purely decorative: a rainbow wall hanging ...

... and a Christmas tree.

Now I'm turning my thoughts to more practical applications of the technique, so my latest pattern is for chunky little purses.

Roly-Poly Purses are beautifully tactile and very easy to make. You just knit a rectangle of colour pops and then gather the ends and add buttons to close it. I loved the simplicity of this project. Here's the knitted rectangle; the wrong side with its pretty lines will be the inside of the purse.

I knitted three different widths of purses from the basic pattern, using the same colours for the pops but changing the background colour. These are going to be very useful for holding little crafty bits and bobs of which I have many.

I think the next colour pop pattern will be a tea cosy. Those textured rolls would keep the heat in well.

At the moment though I'm trying to get various projects finished that have been hanging around too  long. Do you remember my crochet Starburst blanket from last year? 

I had little balls of all the colours leftover when it was finished so I changed the mosaic design to a smaller star with lines, bought more black yarn and made a smaller version to use up the colours.

As you can see, I've got as far as crocheting the squares together so I just need to add the border and give it a serious blocking - it's very lumpy and bumpy at the moment. I think it's going to be a bit small to count as a blanket but I may turn it into a little rug. I don't know what to call it though. Any ideas?

I've just bought some new yarn for a crochet shawl too. This is Scheepjes Whirl which is a combination of cotton and acrylic and comes in a big cake of 1,000 metres of yarn. This colourway is called Rose water Cocktail. Isn't that a delicious name?

Before starting on this, I've been playing around with new crochet stitches, courtesy of an ebook version of the Big Book of Crochet Stitches from the Martingale sale. Have a look, there are some real bargains there. The terminology is American so I have to concentrate a bit but it's definitely expanding my crochet knowledge.

As I told you last time, I've also been using my new / old Singer sewing machine to make a quilt for my son's new house. It's to go over his coffee table which is, unfortunately for me, quite big so this is turning out to be a bigger quilt than I normally make. The top is finished now and I'm waiting for the wadding I ordered to arrive so that I can get started on the quilting.