Wool Shop Review - Karelia House near Aberfeldy

Karelia House in Aberfeldy, Perthshire is a mixed wool, fabric, crafts shop, with coffee shop. They also have a back room where they do classes. Most important things first - they know how to make a good cake and a great espresso. Sorted :)

The cafe is spacious and very warm due to a couple of modern wood burning stoves (which they also sell). It has a mixture of cafe tables, and low sofas. I do love a comfy sofa in a cafe and if I had my crochet with me I'd have been taking advantage. I was almost tempted to buy a crochet hook and a ball of wool just to experience the effect. However, they only seemed to have bamboo crochet hooks which I'm not personally keen on.

Now for the wool - I didn't buy anything. Probably the first time I've been in a wool shop and didn't. However, bear with me, its not a complaint. The wool was exquisite - lovely soft alpacas, wools, hand dyed wools. They also had a great selection of Rowan and Noro. If I was crocheting something like gloves or a scarf then I'd be spoiled for choice, but at the moment, I'm looking for large quantities of cheaper probably synthetic wool in amazing colours to start my next blanket. They didn't have any "cheap" wool. I could have bought Rowan, but tbh, its too expensive to do a large blanket in this, and the colours are a wee bit muted for what I'm looking for.

Overall though, a great shop and one I will be definitely coming back to.

The Magnetic Properties of Crochet

You leave a crochet blanket or two lying around, and before you know it, a cat has spotted it...

When my daughter was little and we were out and about in town, me with my hands full of shopping, and worried about losing grip of her hand, I'd say "magnetise on to me". She'd ooch up next to me like a magnet. Come to think of it sometimes I still say it but she is now 17 and looks at me a bit funny. 

In my mind when cats see crochet, they say "MAGNETISE" and before you can blink, they are on it!

I didn't want to move the cat to photograph this new blanket - another vintage stripe. The difference with this one is that I did purples and blues together, then oranges and lemons, and then greens and blues etc rather than just completely random. The other wee blanket the cat is on is a little ripple baby blanket.

Hello Again, Primrose here.....

Sorry for such a long blog silence. I've been busy on other projects. I haven't stopped crocheting though.

I've missed this blog, so hopefully I'll be able to find some time to post more regularly.

My mum gave me this little bit of crochet. It used to belong to my gran, but due to an injury as a teenager, my gran couldn't crochet. My mum's granny taught her to crochet and she thinks that that was who made this. So this was likely made by my great grandmother. It's very detailed. Much more detailed than my own crochet.

Meanwhile, I've been busy as usual on the wild colours..... Here's a bed sized blanket I made for one of my daughters. It is made in acrylic so that it is machine washable, and I think there are about 20 colours in it. It is loosely based on my original vintage stripe, but it uses half trebles so it is a lot more dense than the trebles. It was quite quick to make this one - I started it on holiday in October, and finished it in time for Christmas.

I finished my Blue Beetle blanket. I designed this one to be in the back of my blue VW. Sadly, finances didn't let me buy the car, but I have the blanket anyway.

And finally a little project over New Year. Telly on, Miss Marple on, coffee and chocolates to hand. Box of wool. I am so easily pleased :)

Little cushion front. I need to just sew a back for it. My sewing machine gave up the ghost and I've been hand sewing recently. I must say that I really like hand sewing. It is strangely calming compared to all the rigmarole of setting up a sewing machine.

A New Little Project

I have a few projects on the go at the moment. Most of them need sewing up to finish, and I'm not in a sewing frame of mind.

So to keep me crocheting, a new little project.

Starting with 20 little circles.

All will be revealed soon.

100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet

 I'm looking for another couple of nice flowers to make crochet brooches for my coats. I like this one below called "pelargonium" and I like the "ruffled rose", and I like the "tea rose".....

 ...and I love these little rosebuds...and the centifolia rose.

Ooh! I'm going to be busy, and need more coats :)

Crochet Cushion Update

I gave the flowers to my mum - and she loved them, but as predicted, didn't care much for the yellow flowers. She has sewn up all the flowers and is a few short for the layout she is doing, so asked me to do some more.

Now that I have made quite a few of them, they only take about 10 minutes each to make.

Flower Blanket

I'm thinking of creating a one colour blanket. Most of the decor in my house is very pale, and whilst I love the multi-colour blankets, I'm wondering what a pale one would look like.

Here for inspiration, with added flowers, is a pale blanket from Cute and Easy Crochet: