Colour clash?

Early in the summer, I crocheted a blanket for Iona.

When there was just the pink and white and yellow, I wasn't sure about the colour. I knew the yellow was too bright, but I had it in my stash and didn't want to go and buy. I also wanted to make the blanket look a bit like a large flower, so a fairly bright yellow in the middle seemed appropriate.

I was amazed when the green was added how it just seemed to lift the whole thing.

Anyway, as I was crocheting this, I was thinking about colour and how I don't feel very confident about choosing colour combinations for projects. I'm quite happy to go with a designer's choice, but I find it really difficult if I want to change things or if I need to choose colours from scratch. This was a bit the case with the blanket, but wanting to use only soft baby yarn, that limited my choice. It was also the case with Gay Ann Rogers's Mystery in a Corner which I ended in adding another colour to half way through.

I do find this particularly frustrating when, quite often, it can be the colour that attracts me to a design. It's so frustrating to make small changes to a design or to design my own piece and find that the colours just don't work the way I want them to.

And when I walk into a shop and look at yarn or floss or fabric, I never seem to be able to find the colours I really want, it always seems to be a compromise. Is it just me and are the shops around here particularly useless? Or is it at least partly the way I look at the colours and the possible combinations?

So I did a little bit of online research, using Ravelry as a starting point, and thought I'd share what I found.

Random stripe generator (for knitters) - www.kissyourshadow.com/stripe_maker.php

COLOURlovers :: Color Trends + Palettes - http://www.colourlovers.com/

kuler - kuler.adobe.com/

Color Wheel - www.quiltopia.com/colorwheel.html

Color Theory Tutorial by Worqx - www.worqx.com/color/index.htm

Color Wizard - Color Scheme Generator - www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp


They all look really useful, and will hopefully help me feel that I do know what I'm doing!

Here are some of the gorgeously colourful pics by other talented people I've found recently on Flickr.

Well, I think the blahs are on their way, at least I hope they are, but I don't know that I'm quite back to my normal self yet. I feel like I'm struggling a bit - I've just sat down here at work and written down a list of all the things I'm supposed to be doing. Usually I manage to keep track of things in my head, but I feel like I'm struggling a bit with it at the moment. I'm also struggling a bit to keep up with my blog reading - there always seem to be far too many posts waiting for me in Google Reader and it keeps putting me off catching up with them.

However, I am feeling a bit more positive about the crochet I've been doing recently and enjoying it a bit more. But, I do seem to be desparately procastinating over the floss ring tag I'm supposed to be making for the Tiny Treasures Exchange. If only I could get it finished, I've promised myself that I'll let myself crochet a certain amigurumi animal for my exchange partner.

Last week, I crocheted a monkey for Claire's Secret Monkey Swap, so that's ready to go out nearer the end of the month.

And as I was walking home last night, I suddenly realised that I haven't shown this to you.


I crocheted it from this pattern which I found via Ravelry. It was great fun to crochet! It's a stellated dodecahedron, that is, a twelve sided 3D shape but instead of having flat sides, it has pointy cone type things sticking out making it a kind of 3D twelve pointed star. As I said, it was great fun to crochet - the twelve cone shapes are all joined as you go along, and it's easier to make than you might think.

I thought Iona might like it as a ball or toy (well that's my excuse) but I rather think I like it bettwe than either Iona or Alexander. I put some bells in the middle, but, as I suspected, they're too squashed by the stuffing to jingle very much. I should take it apart a bit, and put the bells into something (like a plastic practise golf ball?) and stuff round that.

When I was planning this post yesterday, I thought I had no interesting photos to share at all, so I made this mosaic.


Some of the gorgeous flower photos I've seen on Flickr recently. Inspirational or what? My Flickr obsession continues!

Cute crochet inspiration

If my crafty plans for the weekend work out, then I should have plenty of my own photos to share next week, but nothing's yet at the stage that I'd be ready to share.

I also need to go through all the great comments I had on my last post and draw together some thoughts on that. I need a bit more time and space to do that than I get here at work, so, hopefully again, I'll come up with something over the weekend.

It would be just my luck if nothing got done!

So today, I thought I'd share with you some of my cute crochet inspitation.


I really want to make one like little Rosita up there (centre, top row) - I can't get over all that 'hair'!

I was disappointed that this one didn't have the right permissions to appear in the mosaic.


precious baby
Originally uploaded by saplanet


And of course, as soon as I'd made the mosaic, I realised I'd missed out these too!

Florence - Amigurumi White Bear Originally uploaded by Pepika

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil Originally uploaded by Chiwaluv Chi's

Some of the patterns for these are available in various places like the designer's blog, website or etsy shop. I've been wondering a bit recently whether I'm just a bit lazy, I mean, it can't be that hard to work out a pattern for something like a lot of these, based, say, on a basic amigurumi bear. But I'm the mug who falls for the designer's original every time and I have to buy yet another pattern!

My biggest problem with these patterns is the yarn. As I'm sure many have said before, and many more will say in future, most American yarn brands aren't available in the UK! Although I did find out today that I can get Lion Brand Yarn in the UK (bit pricey!), I normally try and work out some approximation. But with something like Florence or Rosita, the appearance of the yarn is half the attraction!

Inspired by Felt!

I've been really inspired by felt this week - just look at the above which I found on Flickr! I'd particularly like to show you Kerrin Quall's felt art - it is simply gorgeous!

'Strawberry Sundae' wall art

Sending Kisses closeup

Originally uploaded by Kerrin Quall, a little bit of just because

Aren't they beautiful? When I (eventually) find the time, I'll definately have a go at playing around with felt shapes and sequins.

In the mean time, I'm planning on playing around with felt and sequins anyway! My other sister (not the one who got married last year) is getting married this year and I've offered to make a ring pillow for her too. I was planning on making something from this book but just haven't been feeling particularly enthused at the thought. Then I saw all that felt lovliness and realised I could probably do something quicker and just as nice in felt. Only problem is, guess where the felt is?

And a certain someone has a birthday next month (already!) so I'm planning something girly and felty there too.

And today, I'm actually allowed to show you something I've made recently as Jenna has received her biscornu in the Tiny Treasures Exchange!



The biscornu is stitched on 28ct yellow checked Graziano linen using a design from the French magazine Mains et Merveilles. I stuck with the charted colour scheme, but changed the flowers to use varigated DMC floss rather than solid colours.

Very cleverly, I managed to completely forget to photograph everything I sent to Jenna, so if you head over to her blog, you can see everything there.

You'll notice that earlier this week I set up Disqus for commenting on my blog after seeing it set up on Chrissie's blog. I really like the way it has the potential to change a casual comment into a conversation and makes it so much easier to respond to comments and keep in touch with commenters!

Off to the shop now to see if I can get hold of a certain magazine!

Edited @ 1.30pm - got it! See page 14 of 'The World of Cross Stitching', issue 150 - it's my Tutti Frutti biscornu!

Inspirational 2

Some of the things I've been finding inspirational this week.

Gay Ann Rogers and her February inspirations. And have you seen her new mystery on her website?

Bargello - for examples, see Liz Morrow's bargello on Picasa, or http://lovetostitch99.blogspot.com/search/label/Bargello.

I bought a couple of books on bargello over the last few weeks and here's some of what I found to inspire me.

From Dorothy Kaestner's Four Way Bargello.

Earth Laughs - I discovered this design from M Designs this week. I love all the flowers and colour and patterns!

'Earth laughs in flowers' is a great quote from E.E. Cummings and inspirational in its own way too. I love the way E.E. Cummings uses words.

Flickr again. This week I've been browsing around photos of Scotland and some of my favourite places.

Among this week's Flick favourites, you'll see some of Jane's appliqued felt brooches - the final item in this weeks list of inspirations - I want them all! They are just so gorgeous - I love all the colour and the way she uses the felt. See her photostream on Flickr or her Etsy shop.

One thing that is definately not inspirational this week, is Bl*gger with all it's word verification issues! I've now switched off word verification on on my blog so that those who were having problems should now be able to comment. For those who talked of switching between Firefox and Internet Explorer - I'm already using IE and still having the problems.

Over the past few weeks I've been making increasing use of Google Reader and discovering all sorts of feeds I can add to it which can be really helpful to track things I tend to forget. I'm now even subscribed to the comments feed from this blog, to my Flickr recent activity and have just discovered that I can subscribe to shop feeds in Etsy to show me when new items are posted! What can I discover next?

Inspirational

I started writing this post in January, but ran out of steam with it as my thoughts were too nebulous to get down on paper. I've come back to it today as I'm having many of the same thoughts now. Maybe I'll get my head round them this time.

The one big advantage of being back at work is that I'm able to spend more time online and I'm loving having to time to trawl round the net being inspired by all the creativity out there. It's really making me feel energised and creative myself too and I have all sorts of ideas for things I want to do. The only problem is finding the time and energy to do them!

I particularly want to thank everybody who has left comments on my previous posts - every one of you inspires me to create and share with you what I'm doing, whether I'm working out my own designs or stitching someone else's. Your comments and feedback are always constructive and inspire me to do more and better.

And I also need to thank Yoyo who also tagged me with the Fabulous Blog award. I should perhaps be listing 5 of my favourite things and tagging others, but I'm going to tie it in with what I'm writing about inspiration here.

My original plan was to share a list of links of the things I've been finding inspitational since I returned to work as I'd been finding the internet itself so inspirational and turning up website gems at a rate I could hardly keep up with. Unfortunately, a lot of these websites seem to fade from my mind as quickly as I find them, so my list is never the same one day to the next. And then, of course, it also varies depending on my mood and different things inspire me for different reasons.

So maybe I should post and note my inspiration more regularly for my own benefit as well as to share. How about 6 things every week?

Anyone care to join me and spread a little inspiration?

Here's my first list.

Vonna - courage in adversity. I hadn't meant to blog today, but then I read her blog.

This post from Hohla at http://saolya.blogspot.com/, particularly her beautiful photos and stitching!

Lucy at Attic24 - blog and flickr - all that yarn and colour - makes me want to go home and fill my house with crochet!

Crocuses -

Crocus
Originally uploaded to Flickr by AnyMotion

The crocuses are just starting to flower in the park I walk through on my way to work. One of the results of feeling more inspired is that I find more inspiration in the world around me too - I need to start carrying my camera around with me all the time to record what I see.

Flickr where you can find amazing photos of almost anything.



Slightly more frivolous this one perhaps, but this post from Isabelle Vautier has me dancing round the room cheering - I definately don't want to forget about it!