Friday, September 14, 2012

Crochet mandala

Tinker and I settled down to a bit of crochet using this beautiful mandala design by Carola Herbst.  The pattern is very detailed and well  written.  I just had to remember that it used American crochet terms so I had to pay attention and change sc to dc etc etc.



In her design she used dk cotton but I wanted to use Rowan Summer Tweed, an aran weight as I wanted it to be bigger and more bulky.


There were a few false starts on the colour choices as I wanted it to co-ordinate with my curtains and cushion.


But eventually I settled on a good combo and I was off!


I'd never tried overlay crochet before and it is fascinating and very absorbing.  It's really interesting seeing the layers develop.  After an hour of hooky fun, this is what I'd done.



There are lots more rounds to crochet and I'm looking forward to watching the pattern develop.  Carola's instructions are really clear and very detailed.

I recently bought this book - Crochet Masterclass in which there is another beautiful pattern by Melody MacDuffee using overlay crochet (part of it is shown on the front cover).  Her piece uses embroidery cottons which sounds great fun as I have a large collection of many colours.




I'm looking forward to trying some new and more challenging techniques such as Clones Lace (using a .75mm hook, yikes!) and revisiting old friends such as hairpin lace - I don't think I've done that since the 1970s when I made shawls!

2 comments:

Jacquie said...

Hi Suzy , thank you for your comment....it's great to find your blog and I'd like to follow you but can't see a followers button.
Your running is wonderfully inspiring and your fundraising something so positive to honor your Mum's memory and help others...amazing.
Jacquie x

Susie Hewer said...

Hi Jacquie, thanks for your kind words. Sorry, I removed the 'follow me button' a while ago 'cos I kept getting strange spam. It's back now and the follow by email is at the bottom of the page. Many thanks, Susie