This afternoon I had to take a trip into the city for a meeting. Whilst I was there I took the opportunity to visit the long anticipated Nottingham Contemporary.

I’ve mentioned this new art gallery before in my ‘Blanket of Ideas’ post and I’d been looking forward to it opening since I heard about it. Not least because their very first exhibition is David Hockney which was not a disappointment, especially ‘A Bigger Splash‘.

The other thing I was hoping to see was the Blanket of Ideas and sure enough it was there with my little shell stitch crochet square right in the middle! That put a grin on my face for the rest of the day I can tell you :) Lisa Anne Auerbach has a really good photo of it on her website ‘The Little Red Blog of Revolutionary Knitting‘.

If you’re in Nottingham visit the gallery. I’m sure I’ll be spending lots more time there.
www.nottinghamcontemporary.org

Nottingham Contemporary is going to be one of the largest contemporary art spaces in the UK, opening on 14th November. How lucky we are to have it in our Midlands city!

Nottingham Contemporary have been working with artist Lisa Anne Auerbach who uses knitwear as a way of provoking good-humoured political discussion. She has created a line of knitwear called ‘Take This Knitting Machine and Shove It‘ for Nottingham Contemporary showing various slogans, song lyrics and sayings.

Following on from this Nottingham Contemporary are planning to exhibit the ‘Blanket of Ideas‘, a huge red and black patchwork blanket with squares knitted and crocheted by Nottingham people, expressing their own political messages. Of course I couldn’t not get involved in this. My square is crocheted in shell stitch which represents a concern for the damage we’re doing to the world’s oceans through over fishing, climate change and pollution.

I loved the shell stitch so much I decided to make something with it that I could keep, so here’s the beginnings of a new winter scarf. It’s getting pretty chilly here now so I’d best get cracking, I’ll need it very soon.

I was going to post a link to a ‘how to crochet shell stitch’ resource but when I started looking I realised that there are many different ways to create a shell stitch. Do a search on Google or YouTube and you’ll see what I mean!

Back in May when it was warm and sunny I taught myself how to make granny squares. Since then I’ve just been hooked!

Well now its October, its cold and rainy and just in time for winter I’ve made a granny square blanket out of my little summer obsession.

I sewed the squares together with black yarn in whip stitch but I think next time I shall either make one giant square the size of a blanket or crochet the small squares together as I go. In total it must have easily taken about 20 hours to sew it together and I was up until 4am this morning determined to get it finished. I think it was well worth it though :)

I’m smitten as a kitten by the fantastic Meet Me At Mike’s blog right now.

Blog owner Pip Lincolne also runs the Meet Me At Mike’s shop in Melbourne Australia and has a book of the same name. I finally managed to buy the book last week and have already started planning some of the craft projects in there. If I lived in Melbourne I’m sure I’d be at the shop all the time buying treats for myself.

Pop over to Meet Me At Mike’s and say “hi” to Pip. She’s had a bit of a tough time this week so could do with some happy vibes.

In the meantime here’s my top 5 reasons to love Meet Me At Mike’s: Continue Reading »

Have you ever been so consumed by a craft project that you just cannot turn your attention, or your hand, to anything else? Since I learned how to make granny squares this has precisely been my problem.

It started quite innocently. My thinking was that since I enjoy crochet as much as I do I should master the staple skill of the granny square. It was quite easy to pick up (from my trusty Happy Hooker book) and once I got it, one square became two, became ten, became twelve… Continue Reading »

It seems like a long time ago now since I mentioned beginning this bag in my ‘Things that are orange’ post. It’s been one of those put-it-down pick-it-up projects, partly because I completely unravelled it and started it again.

Once I’d finished the crochet part it just seemed to want to have a 1970s vibe. Continue Reading »

I really like the colour orange, how can you not like it? It’s warm and cheerful. Some of my favourite things are orange – marigolds, sweet potatoes, goldfish…

Read up on colour symbolism and you’ll find that the colour orange is associated with happiness, heat and flamboyance.

Despite my declaration for a love of orange there is a distinct lack of it in my wardrobe and in our home. Continue Reading »

I was first taught to crochet by my good friend Claire, of Pinky and Boo fame, about a year and a half ago. I’d seen her create lots of beautiful blankets, flowers and other lovely items in such an effortless way that I wanted her to show me how to do it too.

I guess I could have picked up just about any beginners’ crochet book and had a go at teaching myself but convinced that I don’t learn properly that way I wanted a master to show me. I gave Claire a few headaches at first I’m sure because I just wasn’t ‘getting it’ but after lots of false starts it finally sunk in. Continue Reading »