Stylecraft Blog Tour 2016 ~ The Chunky Cowl

Cold autumn mornings are upon us, as I write.

That nip in the air and frost on the grass, fills me with excitement,

 at the thought of layering up in warm scarves and gloves!

I am delighted once more to be taking part in the 2016 Stylecraft Blog Tour.

The wonderful people at Stylecraft are offering a giveaway,

 to celebrate the release of the new shades in the Special Chunky range!

Today's give away is just for you, yes just for the readers of my blog!

I will tell you later how to take part ... keep reading.

Welcome to my blog if you are a visitor for the first time!

 Please stay a while and have a good look round.

Welcome also to old friends, I have a cosy treat for you here!

If you have missed the previous posts on the blog tour,

 you can read yesterdays post here at

Hand Knitted Things

then follow the tour backward using the links provided each day!

To help launch the new shades in the Stylecraft Special Chunky range,

I chose to work with the silver Chunky pack

 and have created for you a simple cowl using

 3 balls of Stylecraft Special Chunky.

I have used the simple corner to corner stitch

 which always makes a perfect square or rectangle

 with delightful straight edges and perfect 90 degree corners.

It is a wonderful stitch which I love to make blankets with,

 as it creates a really thick fabric

 with the added bonus of a gorgeous 3D texture.

(You can see a blanket HERE)

In this post I will be using UK crochet terms.

You can find a conversion to US terms

HERE.

If you have used this stitch before

 you will immediately see how quick and easy this project is going to be.

 If you have not used this stitch before, fear not, it is easy,

 being made up of only trebles and chains.

 I first learnt this stitch using an excellent tutorial by

 Felted Button.

It is a free pattern on Ravelry, you can read how to do it

 HERE.

To make my cowl I used 3 x 100g balls of

Stylecraft Special Chunky

in

the fresh vibrant colours pistachio, aster and empire

 with a 5mm hook.

Work begins at the corner and I make 2 rows in each colour.

I finish my row as shown below,

 then start with the next colour to make the final loop of the last treble.

I leave good length tails of about 4 inches / 10 cm and make a reef knot.

These tails will be used at the end for sewing up the seam in the cowl,

 so do not crochet over them or weave them in now!

At the beginning of my new row I have made a slight alteration to the pattern.

I begin with 5 chain (rather than 6) and make the 3 trebles into the last 3 chain.

This make a closer fabric with less holes.

 I do this as I use 2 chain to replace 1 treble rather than 3.

So now you should be happily striping away

 making 2 rows with each colour and repeating the colour order.

Continue until you have made 10 stripes (20 rows).

This is now deep enough for the cowl so we will begin to decrease at 1 end.

The cowl is made from a rectangle, so we will now keep increasing

 at the other end until the desired width is achieved.

To decrease, flip the work over. 

Now slip stitch along the tops of the trebles till you get to where my needle is pointing.

You will begin work here, so for the last slip stitch use the new colour.

Knot the ends, 

make 2 to replace the first treble and away yo go.

So you can see in the picture below that  corner has been formed.

Keep going making stripes until you have 18 stripes on the long side.

This is now long enough to fold to make the cowl.

Start to decrease at both ends now.

You will end up with a rectangle which has

 10 stripes on the left and 18 stripes at the bottom.

Note that on the right side the pattern makes 9 full stripes

 and a 1/2 stripe at each end.

 This is fine and will complete the pattern perfectly.

The next task is ends.

LEAVE the ends on the SHORT SIDE for sewing up the cowl.

Use a needle and sew in the ends from the long side

 into their own colour stripe.

Fold the rectangle over so that the 2 short edges meet.

You will see that the stripes match up exactly.

Using a needle and small stitches,

sew up the seam to form a tube.

 Use the ends to join up the 2 short edges of the cowl.

I used the pistachio end for the pistachio stripe,

 then the aster end for the aster stripe etc.

Fasten the ends off securely and run ends into their own coloured stripe.

I found I only needed 1 end for each stripe,

 so the final task is to sew in the remaining ends into their own coloured stripe.

Turn it outside in

 and tadaa

 you have your lovely thick warm soft snuggly cowl!

It can be folded in half to wear

 or wrinkled around your neck as suits.

Try some other colour combinations for different outfits!

Here I have combined silver, storm blue and pale rose for a chic look,

and denim, sage and meadow for a subtle casual look.

A perfect project to treat yourself for autumn,

or ideal as a quick make for Christmas gifts!

If you have enjoyed seeing what I made with these colours

 then visit the previous posts in the blog tour for some more inspiration!

This is the final post of the blog tour, but you can follow it backwards by going to

Hand Knitted Things

and then follow the next link given there.

GIVEAWAY

you can enter today's giveaway

 to win the silver pack of Stylecraft Special Chunky

HERE 

only open today, 4th November, do it NOW!

I hope I am leaving you

 inspired, to create and play with these gorgeous new colours

 in the Stylecraft Special Chunky range!

Good luck in the give away competition,

 I will announce the winner on Monday 7th November!

Happy Hookin

Heather

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The Stylecraft Blog Tour ~ The Paintbox Blanket

Welcome to day 6 of the Stylecraft Blog Tour!

Just in case you've missed what's going on . . . . .

a few months ago there was a competition

 to create a new shade of Stylecraft Special DK.

The lovely people at Stylecraft Yarns

 have produced a limited edition pack

 of the winning shade duck egg and 9  runners up!

 To launch the colour pack we are having a blog tour. 

If you missed yesterdays post you can visit

Phil at The Twisted Yarn

HERE

Behind the scenes here at Patchwork House

it's been oh so exciting as

 I've been working on a secret project

 with the new shades.

Imagine my delight when this gorgeous package arrived!

Wow its been so so hard

 not being able to share any photos of my work!

Enter the draw to win this pack! See details below!

As you all know I am a colour artist

 and have made sample squares

 of all my favourite Stylecraft Special DK shades.

I used a small solid granny squares for this,

 nice and plain and simple.

 You can find the pattern for this HERE

I have been enjoying ombre crochet recently

so my first thoughts were to find out where the new shades

 fitted into my existing colour palette.

These 10 new shades are available in a special pack

 of 50g balls and will be for sale from 13th October 

for a limited period only.

 The 10 shades (from the top clockwise) are

 mustard, grass green, boysenberry,

 duck egg, kelly green,

 empire, pistachio, lobelia,

  fuchsia purple and cypress.

I was like a child in a sweet shop and still am

 enjoying much time oooohhhhing and ahhhhhhing as I

 play with my new colour palette. 

As I know many of you hooky friends

 will also appreciate this information here are my findings.

 I have labelled the existing colours on the left

 and the 10 new shades on the right

so that you can see easily where they fit in.

I then made more colour palettes enough to suit my project

I have also taken this opportunity to introduce you to 

another new shade tomato

soon to be available in the shops in October.

So what to make . . . . .

well you can't beat a granny!

I decided to keep the crochet simple

 and let the colours do the talking.

So I made 9 large granny squares

 using the colour sequences shown above

 with silver as a neutral background.

(Please note all my patterns and tutorials use English crochet terms)

I used a 3.5mm hook as this suits my tension

 and each square measures approximately 29cm.

I am often asked how I make a granny square

 and how I get them so perfectly square.

There is a trick and you will find it all

 HERE 

in my granny square tutorial

This was so much fun just playing with colours

I was just like a child with a new paintbox!

For the joining I decided to use even more colour

and chose a different new shade for each of the joining rows.

I always crochet my squares together

 as it makes a really strong join which will never come undone.

You will find my tutorial on joining squares from the front

HERE

Finally I added a single round of double crochet in a colour

 to frame the blanket and another round of double crochet in the silver. 

Then a simple edging was all that was needed to complete it.

You will find the instructions for my Simple Edging

HERE

This blanket is guaranteed to make anyone smile

. . . it is happiness and colour therapy in a blanket!

The finished blanket measures approximately 90cm square

and would be ideal for a toddler's story time snuggle blanket

or a baby play mat.

Tadaa!

I hope this inspires you to have a go at playing with colour.

If you would like a chance to

 win a colour pack of these new shades

 you can enter a draw for the readers of my blog

HERE

this is open for today only Wednesday 30th September from 10am UK time 

and is open to anyone anywhere in the world!

To have another chance of winning why not continue on the blog tour tomorrow

 and see what my hooky friend Angie at Le Monde de Sucrette has been making

You can visit her blog 

HERE

Wishing you all lots of colour fun this week on the Stylecraft blog tour

come back tomorrow to find out who has won today's pack of yarn!

Heather

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