Spring activities

Last weekend we went out flying. Yes, flying with a quadcopter, a model aircraft Peter bought for work. The quadcopter is equipped with a camera and is going to be employed to fly over fields to give an overview of crops. First we spent the morning at home searching the net for instructions, and thanks to Youtube we found really good videos how to get the software working and the aircraft started. Then we drove outside town to a field far away from buildings.

Our first flight was a bit of an adventure as you cannot see the little white quadcopter well against the bright sky when reaching 50 meters of hight. I'm also not used to estimate distances of flying objects, our little fellow always seemed to be too far away from us. The camera which is mounted underneath the body of the quadcopter was connected to our tablet. We could see the hight, distance and battery status and of course the field it was flying over. We trained starts and (soft) landings and how to use all the control instruments. It was such fun, and I'm sure the people who are going to work with the quadcopter will love it too.

Coming back home I admired our spring basket with the pink hyacinth. It grew every day a few centimeters and got heavier too with all flowers opening almost at once. I tied it to the basket handle as the flowers touched the wall already.

My mixed stripy blanket is growing too. I tried to balance the colours as I found the combinations so far a bit too much. Via ravelry I found out about random stripes and colour generators like this one here and even one for squares here. Amazing what is out there in the net! I have not used the generators though, but bookmarked them for future use.

I visited a tea house the other day with my lovely friend U. It is a small shop where they sell tea and cakes. In a little room at the back of the shop you can also drink tea and eat yummy curries. It's been a long time since I sat in a tea house (in Frankfurt there used to be one a few years ago). In our region I didn't know any, and I was very surprised and pleased to find out about that place. Have to go there more often!

Mixed pattern, stripy blanket

I started to crochet a new blanket a few weeks ago. My second blanket in fact. It's a fun project to play with lots of colour combinations and to learn new patterns! Actually I first planned to follow just one blanket crochet along. Then I figured it would be a good opportunity to try out more patterns. The blanket is going to be large enough to have a variety of patterns. And the list of websites I'm gathering patterns from is growing:

1. Hannah's from "Not your average crochet" (Pdf-document, easy to follow!)
2. Jules' from "Little woolie" and
3. Carina's + Jessica's from "Schoenstricken.de" (Very instructional pictures, written in German)
4. Ana Contreras' from "Lanas de Ana"
5. I'm going to try some hearts-in-a-row from here "Annie's crochet world"

Here is the beginning, the first 18 rows: Besides single crochet, half double crochet and double crochet, I used the Granny Stripe, Catherine Wheel and Star Stitch.

 

Followed by Bobbles and Chevron-Ripples:

Then Waves and Tulips:

Here are outlined clusters (actually trying to make it look like hearts, but I will try another pattern for that), Granny Stripes and Catherine Wheel again.

Followed by another row of Bobbles, Shell Stitch and Star Stitch:

This is what it looks like so far:

Yes, very colourful, very stripy, jumping right into your eyes! When planning this blanket it was cold and grey outside and I felt a need for cheery colours. Hope I will like them in summer as well.

Two little owls and the beginning of a new blanket

The companion for the first owl is finished! I blogged about the first one here. Now there are two happy fellows who already found a new home. A friend of mine who came over to our place loved them so much I gave them to her.

So there is room for more amigurumi projects :-)

 

But first I am working on a new blanket project. It is a mixed pattern, stripy blanket. There are great tutorials out in the net and I am following the ones from the talented crocheters Hannah, Jules and Carina and Jessica. And my first few rows are looking like this:

I am using my stash of Schachenmayr Original Bravo that I blogged about earlier. I love working with this acrylic yarn as it is easy to crochet with, stitches are clearly defined, it is soft and machine washable. I chained 241 stitches using a 4 mm hook and doing the rows back and forth. Having so many colours to choose from I hope they will go together nicely.

Hexagon Blanket

"What kind of background did you choose for your blog?", I have been asked. Well, at the beginning of this year I have been browsing the Internet for ideas for a new crochet project and I came across a blog called Attic24. There I fell in love with the beautiful hexagon blanket made by the very talented Lucy. The bright colours and somehow flowery shaped hexagons appealed to me immediately and I began to look for propper yarn. I was a bit hesitant though if I would be able to do such a large crochet project. Until then I just crocheted some amigurumis and a shawl.... But it turned out to be lots of fun. You can crochet just parts of the hexagon which made it a perfect carry-around-project.

And when the number of hexagons grows you can play with colour combinations. I have used 12 different colours, each hexagon consists of 4 different colours, so this makes up to over 20.000 colour combinations! Still I had to watch out since some colours seem to stick together more than others.
In the beginning my blanket looked more like a shawl...

But eventually it became more blanket like:

And grew and grew.....

until one day - all of a sudden - it became a true blanket!

How I love my new colourful summer hexagon blanket! So much that I wanted to see it more often and it became the background of my blog.