Hello and welcome to Episode 84 of the Crafternoon Treats Crochet and Yarn Podcast!

I’ve been taking a bit of downtime after Yarndale at the end of September. The tiredness and drop in adrenaline and forward momentum finally hit hard at the end of the first week in October and its taken me another good week to feel like I’m starting to bounce back.

The upside of downtime is more opportunity for crafting and I mentioned some of the project I’d been working on last time. I’ve had a lot of fun trying out some quick projects, including the Pin Mill mitts by Joanne Scrace of The Crochet Project.

I bought myself a copy of the Easy Everyday Wearables at Yarndale and they kindly gave me an extra copy to give away on the podcast. Last time I didn’t say how to enter to win it so I’ve carried over the giveaway into this podcast and added the lovely sparkly hook from Lisa at For The Love of Yarn.

Autumn is in the air

I’ve also been making some little autumn related leaves and pumpkins.

These are lovely quick projects that can use up little scraps of leftover yarns and you can put them away each year and keep adding to them each October. I’ve added a short pattern round up to the blog that links to some patterns you might like to try.

Check out the autumn pretties pattern round up

Sweater shenanigans

Its a goal of mine to make a wearable crochet garment in the not-too-distant future but I don’t have a lot of time to spend on working out which is the best pattern and then getting on with it. My approach is a bit hit and miss but I do like a good experiment, as you know.

So when I saw a short, cropped chunky Sweater in Issue 118 of Inside Crochet (one of the leading UK crochet magazines) I thought it would make a great project. Very quick and a good proof of concept project to see if I could make a top down sweater.

The only trouble was that making it in the recommended yarn, or any other 100% wool would have cost well over £100. I don’t mind spending money on luxury fibres for small projects, particularly if its hand dyed, but commercial yarn for a three figure price tag was a step too far.

I’ve therefore been looking at alternatives and explain my process with trying out the sweater in some chunky yarn that I already had in my stash.

I also show the chunky granny sweater I made a few years ago, which led to ‘tellytubbygate’ hahaha.

We shall see how I get on but I’m enjoying it as a bit of a fun and whacky project with a serious backstory to learn more about sweater construction.

Boxy progress

I mentioned last time that I have started a worsted Boxy sweater – pattern by Joji Locatelli. If you buy the worsted boxy and the fingering weight boxy you get a discount on the second pattern, which is what I did. I’m making it in my Corriepol DK yarn and doing a bit of a deep striped boxy, starting with Kingfisher and now I’ve changed colour to Shale, using the jogless join technique that I learned on YouTube.

There are quite a few tutorials and several methods of avoiding a jog when you change colour in the round but these ones were the ones I had a look at… The first one by Stacie of Very Pink Knits is the one I used (I think I may need to perfect the technique

Crochet sock making

I’m trying to get back into this as its such fun. You can see my previous efforts here, here and here.

Etsy shop news

I have listed the last kits I have available including the Oceania Fade set, the Celadon one skein shawl set and the Pink Silk shawl set.

I will also have some sock club sets available over the next week. The last one for May is available now and I’ve also added a free ballet shoes stitch marker to the Ballet Shoes sock yarn colour way for the last 5 skeins left.

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