Making do

I have had a lovely peaceful weekend, the weather hasn't been too great which is fine by me. I really do love it when it's raining outside and I am cosy indoors, feet up with a cuppa and some crochet.

Hhhm the crochet. I'm not doing too well with it at the moment. With the decorating of the spare room (my yarn dump) in full swing, all my yarn has been unceremoniously crammed into bin liners. This has left me with very limited choices with the only yarn that I can get at being what I was already using. A small amount of stylecraft special DK which has been earmarked for other things, the hand dyed 4 ply I am making my scarf/shawl in and the massive ball of aran I bought to finish my hearts cushion, that ended up being surplous to requirements.

With any creativity seriously hampered by my lack of choice I tried to get on with extending my scarf to make it into something more usable.

I started by adding a row of chains to one side of the scarf and then another row to get the chain loops the right width for adding a few more rows of broomstick. I hadn't realised quite how long I had made the scarf part and those chains seemed to take forever! I did eventually get them finished and cracked on with adding the first row of broomstick. That took even longer! Two, three hours maybe and seriously depleted what little yarn I had left. 

One row and perhaps enough left on the ball for one more row, not enough to make a shawl by any stretch of the imagination. I think it is time to scrap that idea and unpick this addition. It is very annoying to have spent so long on this bit only to have to unpick it all and I haven't quite mustered up the resolve to rip it back yet.

So I needed something else to get on with and my only other yarn option was the massive ball of cream flecky aran.

I wasn't relishing the thought of making something in this and only this! It is hard to be inspired when you know that the finishing result, however well made and intricate the pattern might be, is going to be all in one, fairly dull colour.

It is very arany aran - not just the yarn weight but the look and feel of it. It really lends itself to some cabling or to make a thick chunky fabric. I considered making another tote bag like the one I made last year:

I did enjoy the challenge of making that bag, it was a complete departure for me - concentrating on stitch patterns rather than colours - but I have made one of them and don't need another. It also took quite a lot of concentration and that wasn't what I was looking for, I wanted something I could hook up fairly quickly so that I didn't get too bored with crocheting in just cream.

I played around with a few ideas and settled on a simple basket weave pattern and it is coming along nicely.

I wasn't exactly sure what it would be when I started, I don't need another cushion! Now that I have got quite a lot of it done I am 99% sure it will be a bag. A medium sized project bag for small WIPs and scraps. I want to line it too to make it nice and sturdy and maybe add some vintagey flowers and buttons to it, if I can find my button tin in one of the bin liners. 

It is quite frustrating having so little choice when I am craving pretty colours. I confess to getting very annoyed by this cream aran at times, but it has done the job, it gave me something easy that needed very little concentration to get on with while the rain came down outside. It has also spurred me on to get the spare room finished so that I can unload the bin liners and have my shelves once again filled with bright, inspiring, colourful yarn!

XXX