Catherine's Crochet Corner

Oh my goodness, have you seen how much the lovely people at Stylecraft are spoiling us?

Twenty new shades of Special DK. Yes, you read that right, twenty new shades!!!! That takes the full range up to a hundred and twenty colours!

Look at these goooorgeous new colours.

Like I said, spoiling us. New red! New blues! Purples! Greens! Pinks! I would say I can’t choose a favourite but let’s face it, we all know I’m a blue and purple person at heart, so I’m going to have to say the ones that really catch my eye are, of course, those blues – especially the light blue, ‘Blue Sky’. I and others have been telling Stylecraft for ages that we need another light blue, and hurrah, here one is!

Aren’t they glorious? Aren’t you all so thrilled? Can you, like me, not wait to get your hands on these squishy balls of loveliness?

And in even better news, Stylecraft have brought production of these shades back to their mill in Yorkshire, and as stocks of the other shades are used up, production of all of the SSDK colours will take place in the UK, which is great news for a proper British brand like Stylecraft. They’ve invested heavily in their mill in Yorkshire to bring this about, including with a combined heat and power plant which produces electricity more efficiently than a normal gas fired power station. You can read more about the move here on their website (click ‘Made in Yorkshire’).

Now, I’m obviously not managing a great deal of crochet right now! Little Miss and I are settling into life together, and I am snatching odd minutes of crochet here and there, but for the past few weeks she’s declined to be put down anywhere for naps during the day – she insists on being held or being in the sling held close to my chest. Which is fine! But definitely reduces the time I have for, you know, doing anything…but I’m figuring out ways around that, and I definitely hope to be getting back to some proper crochet soon.

That said, I am hoping to make a few things with some of these new shades. Little Miss, it transpires, has incredibly long legs and keeps outgrowing the legs of babygrows before the rest of her fits into the next size up, so we’re doing a lot of tights and dresses, or leggings and cardies, and obviously she needs some more crocheted clothes to grow into. This feels like an absolutely appropriate use for some of these lovely new Special DK colours 🙂

I can’t wait to see how everyone uses these new shades and mixes them with the 100 older colours. Honestly, I can’t wait to start playing around. But if you’re feeling unconfident on colour mixing and want some pointers, how about heading over to Helen at Crystals and Crochet, who’s made a wonderful video giving an idea of where the new colours sit in the range? And I know Lucy at Attic24 is also going to be exploring the new colours in the next few days, and as I’m sure you all know, Lucy’s colours are flawless – in fact, she was involved in choosing these new twenty colours!

See you all soon xxx