Deep, hot water

Five shades of Wendy Merino 4 ply and 3mm knitting needles  - a story of unravelling disintegration.
or
What started as an experiment in adding texture to knitting nearly ended in plagiarism.

I wanted a way to add pleats or folds. Slip stitches that pulled up the starting row seemed the way to go. It was intended to look like rolling waves and it worked.

After writing up the pattern I came across a video on YouTube for rolling pleats. It's for a stitch pattern published in the May 2008 issue of Simply knitting and yes, it was almost the same as mine. So it was back to the drawing board.

One thing you might not know about me is that I listen to The Cure while I work. It's appropriate that I found my inspiration while listening to Disintegration.

I stripped it back to the bare stitches. What's the point of slipping stitches on every row when you don't need them? Got rid of them and bring them back when you actually want to work them.

The result was a crisper, sharper fold and much easier to write up. It's original and now I'm not in The Same Deep Water as Robert Smith.

Daisies and forget me nots

It's been a late spring this year. The lawn is full of self-seeded flowers so a cut will have to wait until they fade. The inspiration is right outside the window for this classic turquoise, yellow and white sphere with a pretty daisy chain trim. 

The yarn is Rico Essentials cotton with a 2.75 crochet hook. It will be surface embroidered with, of course, lazy daisy stitch.

My neighbours might have bowling green lawns but if the primroses, forget me nots and bluebells have decided to sprout I will not cut them down. It looks like a flower meadow at the moment. You can't spoil that!

Layered flower

I wanted a multilayered flower and had tweaked the base most of yesterday. I decided to scrap the idea and went for a water lily theme. It rests on blue which takes the heat out of the coral and yellow. The white looks brilliant white but it's there to make the other colours pop.

The cotton is Rico Essentials with a 3mm hook.

I would have loved to have created the sharpness of the lilies in my garden pond but there's only so much you can do in a three round crochet pattern.

Instead of structure I've gone for the tones in another of Design Seeds palettes.

Inspiration

I've decided to keep a record of my work. You won't see the finished projects just yet but this is my way of remembering colours, yarn and hook size. No matter how many notes and patterns I write it's always an image that sparks my memory.

I love these bright colours from Lion Brand. They are called Bonbons. At just 10g each they're perfect for small projects.

The colour combination was inspired by Design Seeds