January blues and color weapons
After the end of the Christmas holidays, the everyday routine has cought us all as of a sudden; Having to return to the early wakes and the school runs under a freezing grey sky has been all but a pleasure. Especially for the little ladies of our pond. Who have been desperately trying to skip afternoon classes with poor excuses like “my throat feels a bit sore, can I stay home?”. Do I have to tell you my answer? No, I’m sure you get it! 🙂
Me, on the other hand, the eternal spring lover, the one who just patiently puts up with winter, until it’s over, have fought the blues with the only weapons I have. Colorful crochet, blanket planning and flowers all around the house.
Soon after finishing all, I mean all wips of 2016, I have started crocheting a giant chunky blanket with white and cream yarn; It was something I was thinking about for a long time, planning to use this blanket for my double bed, so I bought some Deramores own brand anti-pilling chunky yarn and used it double stranded with a 12mm hook. It’s nice to see how quickly this blanket grows and it’s an easy peasy crochet pattern, sitting heavy on my lap as the cold evenings unfold. But, as much as I like this, I should have imagined that I’d break the vow of one project at a time. Yes, the ‘milk & butter’ blanket is lovely, but some color was urgently needed to light up the dull days.
I wanted something which smells like spring, like green grass and lovely freesias and clear skies, all at once. So, I decided to go -once again- for a blanket and use only few shades of yarn, just six, mainly blues and greens, complemented by an ultra vibrant hot pink. Very happy about my choice, I crocheted one mini square or each color, just to see if my choice worked well in real life also. Yep, good enough.
It’s weird, but it’s very hard for me to visualize the end result of a crochet project, especially a big one like a blanket. That’s why I have to crochet a good amount of samples before I land on the final colors and their order. So, in this case, after the mini squares, some big ones followed and I was happy to see that what I had in mind worked also in real life measurements. Â But the color order? And frequency? Hmm, that was still a big questionmark.
And now it’s time to reveal my primitive method of using a computer to plan a blanket. Those of you who are into designing with a pc, please don’t laugh at me. Photoshop and similar software are terra ingocnita for Cherry Frog… That’s why I’ve found a way, which works for me, as it involves only powerpoint and, boy, ok, I’m good at that (not anything to be really proud of, I know, but still!). So, bear with me, this is how I do it.
I have pics of all the yarn shades that I use, small pics that are quite close to the real color of each shade. So, I insert the pics of the shades I intend to use to a powerpoint presentation, copy-paste them many times and arrange them so as to form something that looks like the blanket I have in mind. For this specific blanket that I’ve started, each square will be 20×20 cm, so I needed the blanket to be four squares wide times eight squares long. Simple math ;-P The joining lines are made by dragging and shaping and resizing the picture of the yarn color I’m going to use. A small example of this messy method you can see below.
See? The design ends up this way, which is at least understandable to me and gives me a clear picture of what the end result will be. Ok, the border will not be straight in real life and I might even change my mind on the color order, but at least I know how many squares of each shade I have to crochet. Yep, good enough.
Maybe sometime in the near future I’ll need to invest time into learning digital design or something like this. Until then, my old powerpoint does the trick. Nana seems to agree with me <3
Up until now, my precious and scarce free time is split between the winter milk & butter chunky monster and the spring corner to corner squares. I think it’s fair to finish the chunky monster first and use it before the cold days are over, but my heart is drooling over the light and airy squares of my spring dream~ Â And I know deep inside that this dillema will end soon, when a new wip will start to triple the pleasure!
Hope that spring weather is closer to you, either in real or through creative moments.
Froggy kisses from the pond
xxx