Lazy Crochet

After dealing with the complexities of the Primrose Garden blanket, I felt the need to do some simple crochet. This is what I came up with ...

This is the v stitch pattern, normally worked in one row stripes. Isn't it pretty? Now, I don't normally mind sewing in lots of ends with crochet but it struck me that there'd be an awful lot of ends on a scarf. So, I put my mind to working out how to avoid them and came up with my lazy crochet technique. Basically, you work two rows in the same direction, one in each colour, before turning the work and crocheting the next two rows. I used a plain colour for my main yarn and a variegated for the contrast but, even if you changed the contrast colour every row, you'd still have cut down the number of ends by half.

First of all I knitted this scarf, using navy DK weight yarn and some Lion Brand Mandala in a shade called Gnome. This is made up of eye-wateringly bright colours which I wasn't that keen on but pairing them with the dark blue has toned them down nicely.

The finished scarf is edged with a simple border in the main colour which evens up the sides. You can download the pattern from ravelry as normal. Lazy Vee Scarf.

It didn't take long to crochet this scarf so I then thought I'd try a completely different colourway, using the same technique to make a blanket.

I used a bigger hook for this project so the fabric has a softer drape. The two yarns I used were both from Stylecraft: Cream Batik for the main colour and Rainbow Batik Swirl for the contrast. I think these colours give the blanket a soft, vintage feel.

The blanket has a slightly more elaborate border than the scarf which you may or may not be able to see in this picture.

The blanket is called Lazy Vee Blanket and can be found next to the scarf pattern in my Ravelry Shop - two patterns for the price of one (if you can say that when both patterns are free.

I keep hard copies of all my patterns and these two finish off the 15th file. That's not counting all the big pattern series which have their own files.

The fifteen pattern files are on the lower shelf; above them are all the big series and, at one end, my collection of pattern notebooks. My daughter is hoping to be able to visit me for a few days next month and I'm going to pick her Archivist brain about how to organise those notebooks. They are full of incomprehensible scribblings and random pieces of loose paper which only mean something to me (and not even that sometimes) so I'd like to sort them out a bit.

According to ravelry, I have published 549 patterns in the last thirteen years or so. Blimey - how did that happen?