Catherine's Crochet Corner

Hello all – long time, no see.

I took you all at your word, and have spent the last few months not worrying about crochet/this blog/updates. As you know, for quite a long time I couldn’t crochet at all anyway – and besides, the garden has kept me busy, and the cats, and the chickens. I’ve had busy days and quiet days, and have spent the last few months resting, recuperating, and coming to an understanding of who I am, with this new strand of my story woven in.

It’s six months now since I gave birth to my poor baby Matty, and I will always carry him with me, but I am…recovered. I’m different to the person I was, and that’s okay. I’m okay.

I’m also crocheting properly again, hurrah! And enjoying it. I’m mostly still working on the granny square curtain that I think I talked about in my last post, but *gasp* I’ve also designed a thing! It’s currently being tested, but I should be giving you all a new Christmas-y pattern in the next few weeks.

I’ve also done something I’ve sort of vaguely planned to do for a while, which is to rework my blanket ‘Spin Me Around‘ in a different colourway, and the lovely people at Stylecraft must have read my mind, because this summer they brought out some new colourways of the yarn I used for that blanket, Batik Swirl.

If you haven’t already seen the five new colourways, they are ‘Colorado River’, ‘Sand Dune’, ‘Tropical Flower’, ‘Norwegian Fjord’, and ‘Lily Pond’ – which is what I used. You can see them all here on Stylecraft’s website. The original colourways of Batik Swirl are very colour-block-y, which is gorgeous, but these five new shades have slower and subtler colour changes, which creates a very different effect (though also, obviously, gorgeous).

Batik is always a really nice yarn to work with, and as soon as I saw the new colourways, I knew the time was finally right to rework Spin Me Around in a new colour.

Spin Me Around is a very simple, centre-out circular blanket. Once it’s set up, it’s a three-row pattern repeat where the spiral effect is created by adding in an extra chain space at the beginning of each repeat. Looking at the numbers (downloads on Ravelry, tags on instagram, etc) it’s actually become one of my most popular blankets, which I never quite anticipated, although I’m very pleased by it! People have crocheted it in all sorts of yarns and colours, and they all look lovely.

So this happy combination has now occured – new Batik Swirl yarn, a desire to redo the blanket, and a renewed ability to crochet 🙂

Ta da! You can see how the purple, pink, green and grey really blends together, making a very different impact to the older Batik colourways. And though I say it myself, the blanket pattern itself is just quite fun to do. It’s pretty simple and straightforward, once the repeat is set up, and it’s easy to get into a rhythm with it. I enjoyed working it up again.

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For anyone who needs them, the details are these: I used three balls of Batik Swirl and a 4.5mm hook to create a blanket approximately 48”/122 cm in diameter. The pattern is available for free on Ravelry, written in US terms and also with a chart showing the first twelve rounds (which is the initial set-up and the first repeat).

If you’ve not made Spin Me Around before, these new colourways are the perfect excuse. What are you waiting for? Go forth and crochet 😀

See you all soon.

xxx