My name is anonymouse and I am a yarn-a-holic – Its been 2 weeks since my last yarn purchase though I did get a bloomin’ huge sack of yarns from my mother that she had purchased on a trip to the Netherlands, which obv as I did not buy, does not count as a purchase at all! so I am feeling rather virtuous!
I am on a ‘limited’ budget – my yarn purchases have to be carefully considered and usually a bargain there is little wriggle room for purchasing yarns to ‘try out’, especially from online where I cannot touch them, (though I have a long long list of yarns on my wish list available to friends and family around birthday and xmas time that are way out of my budget but I so want to try them!).
My go to purchase has always been stylecraft – their yarns are beautiful to work with, gorgeous colours and within my budget – plus I have a bit of a crochet crush on lucy of attic24 – whose use of stylecraft in her work has caused many oohs, omg thats lush!! and I NEED TO MAKE THIS!! to be exclaimed over excitedly, much to the amusement and sometimes exasperation of those around me.
I was lucky enough to be given a gift voucher for deramores for Christmas by my very understanding and yarn habit supporting family, which I immediately logged online to spend. They were having a deal on red heart yarns at the time so I had a weeny look as I have been intrigued by red heart since I began crocheting – so many crocheters use it and call for it in their patterns but it is like unicorn poop in the uk unless you order online and can be way out of my budget. So imagine my joy when I found red heart lisa which at the time was at the bargainous price of 80p per 50g ball!! (usually £1.09 a ball – which is still rather good) It was like the stars aligned in my favour!
As ever I wanted every colour!! rainbow colours are my absolute favourite colour combinations – nothing much happier than a rainbow right?
But I also needed to replenish some of my trusty stylecraft shades so once those were in the basket I had about £10 to play with. I ended up purchasing the following shades: Fire, Gold, Pink Freesia, Azure, Intense Blue, Farn, Lagoon, Pumpkin, Purple, Flieder, Sweet Pink and Indigo. With a ball of mid – grey chucked in to make up the £25 for free delivery – not to sound like a fan girl but did I mention the free delivery with orders over £25? more money to spend on yarn – whoop!!!
As some of the colours needed to be back ordered my yarn arrived in batches over the next 10 days – and it did not disappoint – the colours were beautiful and the yarn all squidgy with that ‘new yarn’ smell. As each new ball arrived I played around with colour combinations and stuck them on a shelf where I could see them and admire their colourfulness.
The yarn itself is advertised as being DK weight but I think it is slightly thicker than the DK balls I usually use and it is soft and crochets up really nicely using a 4.5 hook.
The yarn sat on my shelf for a month or two as I got on with making some bits and bobs that were on my to do list – until, that was, I revisited the attic24 blog and fell absolutely head over heals again with Lucy’s blooming flower cushion I had to make one and thought the red heart lisa would be perfect for it.
I absolutely love the way it turned out. As always Lucy’s instructions were easy to follow (once I got my head round the english crochet terms). I loved the way each new layer of colour changed the entire look of the cushion – and how quickly and easily it grows.
I was pleasantly surprised at the end of the cushion how much yarn I had left – I usually only buy 100g balls as they seem a better bargain but these 50g balls appeared to be lasting really quite well. So with that in mind attic24 provided me with my next colourful project in the shape of the Jolly Chunky Bag.
I cannot tell you how much I love this bag – so much so I spent about 15 minutes after completing it trying it out!! Putting my bits and bobs in, finding a purse that would ‘go’ with it, walking up and down my hallway with my pastel pink heart shaped sunglasses on. Which is all rather hysterical given my agoraphobia!
I messed up a little on the strap size as I misread the pattern so only did one row of each of the colours rather than two, but it seems to be holding up just fine! Making this bag also made me realise that my button ‘stash’ is quite insufficient, the only buttons I had that were of the right size were a cream colour rather than the colourful ones used in the attic24 pattern – which means alas, I shall need to start buying more buttons as well… which I shall not tell the other half just yet!
To my surprise the balls of yarn were still looking pretty darn full. I had seen some ponchos that fellow crocheters in a Facebook group I belong to were making so thought I would give it a go. I used the pattern from le monde de sucrette.
Another easy to follow pattern though I ‘guesstimated’ how big to do the starting chain and how many rows being as I have no ‘little ones’ to try my creations out on, unless my nephew is visiting (though I am not sure that the poncho would be his sort of thing). I did 80 chains to begin and 24 rows in total, changing colour every row.
I think it turned out pretty good 🙂
Somehow I still had a load of the yarn left of these seemingly tardis like 50g balls of yarn – so I toyed with the idea of making another bag – but instead went for another cushion as I do like to have lots of complimentary cushions all piled up making my ‘donated for free because it was so uncomfortable metal framed sofa/torture device’ slightly more comfortable.
I went for a square cushion and made stripes of hdc changing colour every row. with a classic ‘envelope’ style closure with buttons at the back. (yes the buttons were cream, I really do need more buttons!)
I was left with some pretty sizable scraps of yarn and knew I could squeeze one more thing out of them and had just the project in mind!!
Back to attic24 and lucys happy flower decorationI, was a little nervous about this one for some reason but the instructions as ever, were easy to follow and with lots of pictures. Yet again my lack of ‘stash’ let me down – I now need to not only work on my buttons but on random beads as well. Also I had no pva glue so used spray starch instead. It has worked for me but I will need to restarch if I wash it.
Mine is darker than the attic 24 version but I love seeing it hung up on my wall near the front door looking all colourful and pretty.
And that was the yarn finished – apart from some tiny scraps which will go towards another project I have seen and want to try – the yarn ends bowl – just need to collect a few more scraps first.
12 balls of yarn, 5 projects and £9.60 spent – total bargain. Thankyou to attic24 and Le monde de sucrette for sharing your patterns/tutorials – would love to see other peoples versions of these projects – or hear about your favourite yarns
p.s honestly I didn’t buy another 20 balls of red heart lisa the moment I saw that they were on special again!! ok maybe I did but it is soooooo gorgeous it would have been rude not to!
anonymousecrafts 