Follow-up Friday – The “Rustic Lace Square”-blanket

Follow-up Fridays that have a big “ta-dah” are great ones generally speaking, but today’s one might be the very best ever, because, you guys: the “Rustic Lace Square”-blanket is finished!!
I’m so incredibly excited, happy and proud of this blanket – I’ve loved making all my blankets, but the “Rustic Lace” is extra-extra special.What strikes me most is that up until the last square, I have loved crocheting it.
Usually I’m a little bored and “done” with a project this big when I’m nearing the finish line – most certainly not this time. All credit for that goes to the – unfortunately still unknown – maker of this extremely pretty square.
Whoever you are: thank you for such a gorgeous pattern (that you can find the link to here)!

I’ve written about the beginning of my infatuation with the “rustic lace” before (right here), around the time when I started this project, well over a year ago. In that post you can read about who started the “rustic lace square”-hype (lovely Cornel and Magda), and if – like me – you can’t get enough of this square, you definitely need to check out the #rusticlacesquare on Instagram! It will give you almost 2.000 posts to drool over ….

This was my very first square, and 121 more were to follow ……
Usually I had no problem picking out colors, but sometimes I went through the Design Seeds-feed for inspiration. I learned along the way, that being (obsessively) picky about the same colors sitting too close each other wasn’t necessary, nor effective. Since my blanket was one big color bomb anyway, it really didn’t matter.

I was a good girl this time around and sewed in all my yarn ends as soon as I had finished a square. Also, not looking forward to joining all my squares at the very end, I’m extremely happy with the “join-as-you-go” I came up with early on (tutorial here), that too worked like a charm.Halfway through mine, I started seeing “rustic lace square”-blankets that only had colorful hearts and neutral colors on the outside (like this one, or as seen here).
I truly liked these as well (maybe even more), but I was way past the turning point with mine.

Maybe *cough* a next “Rustic Lace Square”-blanket?

Once I had finalized crocheting all 122 squares, I put the blanket on its final destination: our bed. Such a happy sight! I always thought it would need a border – looooved Nerissa’s design – but seeing it spread out in all its glory, I wasn’t too sure anymore.
For a whole day I would walk in, stare at it, sometimes carrying a ball of cotton in a certain color, to see whether inspiration would strike, but no…. nothing.
I simply liked it – lacy and frilly as it was, and decided it did not need a border at all.
Besides, should I ever change my mind, all I have to do is pick up my hook again, and start crocheting.

Some stats:
* size: 242 x 242 cm (approx. 95 x 95 inches);
* weight: circa 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs);
* pattern: “Rustic Lace Square” – “joined-as-you-go”;
* yarn: all 100% cottons, “Katia Capri”, “ByClaire”, “Durable”, “DMC”, “Catania”, “Hema”, “Scheepjes”
* hook size: 3,5 mm (US: 4/E, UK: 9).

Wishing you all a happy weekend!
Love,
Marianne xx

PS: thank you, Quinn & Carter for being my patient photo shoot assistants :)

Follow-up Friday

Happy Friday to all of you! The past week was a mixed bag of ups and downs (just like life in general, wouldn’t you say?), but luckily the “ups” outweighed the “downs”, so all’s good.

A big, rather personal, “up” was my mother turning 85 years old on Tuesday. She invited our small family for a celebratory “rijsttafel”-dinner in our favorite Indonesian restaurant, “Djago”. We just had a delightful time, enjoying each other’s company, as well as the excellent food.
Another “up” was the sunny spring weather that mother nature finally sent us – first outdoor crocheting of the season was a fact, hurray!You know how much I love my daily walks with Mila the Wonderdog, but seeing nature wake up at this time of year, is definitely a bonus. Oh, and speaking of our beloved Mila: she turned 1 on April 12th.

As I told you last Tuesday, I’ve picked up my “Rustic Lace Square”-blanket again; very happy to report I’ve made great progress. Twelve more squares were added to the 54 that I was up to this past Sunday.
At that time I thought I needed a total of 143 squares, but after doing some proper measuring&calculating this morning, I think 132 squares will be enough, which means: I’m half way through – yay!!
I “just” need to keep the momentum going …….

You might remember this little thing in black and white? I’ve worked on that on and off over the last few weeks, having enough pieces to assembly them in either a cushion cover, or maybe a bag? What do you think?
In a little “Rustic Lace Square”-lull, I played around a bit, which resulted in this colorful surface crochet – fun to do!

And lastly there’s Haafner’s test-mandala, that I’ve been meaning to turn into a cushion cover. How about finding this perfect matching blue in my stash? I’m looking forward to finishing it. While going through my stuff/stash, I also found this long lost Instagram pouch – made almost 3 years ago, following this free pattern by “Haak & Smaak”.

In between all this, I’ve been working hard on my May-project for CraftKitchen, while my second one – a diy to make cute little treasury boxes – went live on the CK-site yesterday – busy, but exciting times!
The tutorial (in Dutch ànd English) will be available here on Monday.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend,
love,
Marianne xx

Treasury Tuesday

I can’t believe a full 7 days have gone by since my last blog post! This past week didn’t even have a proper “Follow-up Friday”, and it was most certainly not because of a lack of crochet to follow-up on……
Some projects can’t be shown yet, like some of the beautiful patterns that will be in Janneke‘s book (and that I had the privilege of testing), other projects were made in preparation of my CraftKitchen work. One of them will be published on the CraftKitchen-site (in Dutch) coming Thursday – both tutorials (in Dutch ànd English) will be available here on “maRRose” as of next Monday.

Super-crochet-talent Sandra asked me last week to test one of the mandala designs she’s contributing to a book; such a delightful task. In this case I was allowed to share the project via social media, don’t you agree that this is a wonderful pattern? I love it – another book that I can’t wait to be published for!

Over the weekend I decided it was about time to pick up my “Rustic Lace Square”-blanket again. I added 6 squares, and I’am up to a total of 54 squares. Not even half way ……  I simply had to make a “rustic lace square” in “Sophie”-colors …….

I’m still madly in love with this blanket-to-be, and I’m resisting following-up on all kinds of new crochet stuff that keeps popping up in my head – dedicated to keep working on the “Rustic”, and finish it in the not too far future.For no reason at all, “pastel” was the crochet I was looking for to fill this week’s “Treasury Tuesday” – don’t they all look fresh and spring-like?

This blanket is my ab-so-lu-te favorite this week:

as are these pretty bracelets:

Wishing you a happy new week,
love,
Marianne xx

Follow-up Friday – The “Hetti” Cushion

It’s another happy “Follow-up Friday”: last night I finished my corner-to-corner cushion in red, white and blue. So, hot off the hook&needle, here’s my “Hetti” cushion!

I started it about a month ago, got side-tracked by amongst others the “Happy Bag”, and to tell you the truth, I’m delighted it’s on the ex-wip-list.

No matter how much I loved working on it, I don’t think I’ll easily start another one. You wouldn’t say, since there are “only” 3 colors used, but the color changes were countless – not to mention the ends…….. Dealing with ends normally does not bother me at all (part of the crochet deal, right?), but I don’t think I’ve ever sewn in this many!There was a slightly scary moment, when I was about to wash the crochet part: would the red start bleeding?? This had happened before with my “I love Holland”-cushion, and (while I panicked) only some quick and adequate internet searching by my husband kind of solved that. I remembered using vinegar as a good tip, and that’s what I did now as well.I added 1 cup of vinegar to a bucket of cold water, and then my crochet. I gently stirred every 10 minutes or so, and after an hour I rinsed the cushion top, and machine washed it (gentle cycle) with Eucalan: perfect!

So all in all: I’m very satisfied with how it turned out, but this cushion cover’s not very likely to have any siblings soon.
I’ve named it after the designer of the pretty cross stitch pattern following which I’ve crocheted this cushion, the lovely Hetti, who graciously shares a lot of her beautiful patterns for free.

Another project that I’ve spend quite some time on lately, is my “Rustic Lace Square”-blanket. I soooo love working on it again.
When I picked this wip up, I counted 24 finished and joined squares, 3 squares that just needed to be joined, and 11 finished hearts. In addition to these, I’ve crocheted and joined 10 squares from scratch, so after 10 days the blanket now has 48 squares: woohoo!
I’m determined to keep working on it – at least 62 more squares are needed; I’ll keep you updated in my “Follow-up Friday”-posts!
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Marianne xx

Follow-up Friday – Babyblanket “Wynter”

Hurray for “Follow-up Friday” finished projects! And especially the ones that you’re happy with, like I’m with this one.

Not only am I pleased with how this blanket turned out – I’m also quite relieved that its initial pile of granny squares is no longer staring at me…….
It all started when “Simply Crochet Magazine” released their “granny square app”, issuing one granny square pattern per week – for free! On a whim, I decided to join (more on that here), and truly enjoyed my weekly little task of crocheting a pretty square.
Unfortunately they stopped publishing new patterns under the app all of a sudden, leaving me with aforementioned pile of pretty squares, 29 of them, and almost all of them in a different size.

Having dealt with this matter – the odd sizeness – before, when putting together my “Homely Blanket”, again I decided to first make sure they all had the same size.
This kept me nicely busy for two nights, after which the next decision had to be made: what to make with 29 squares. Three pillow covers? Or would an acceptably sized baby blanket be an option?
Seeing that a 4 x 7 squares lay-out looked really lovely, and made for a decent blanket size wise as well, the next decision had to be made.
With what color would I join my rather eclectic bunch? Going from light pink, to off-white, and dark brown I finally took the plunge and went for black. I guess a rather bold choice, but quite honestly: I love it!
There being so many ways to join granny squares out there, I picked the one I had come up with when I joined my “rose granny squares” (tutorial here) into the “Rose Baby Blanket”.

So, here’s baby blanket “Wynter”, that saw its first beginnings way back in …… May of 2014!
Details:
* size: 70 x 1.20 m (27.5 x 47.2 inches);
* weight: circa 580 grams (1.4 lbs);
* pattern: Simply Crochet Granny Square App;
* yarn: 100% cotton, “Katia”, colors 115, 121, 083,143 and 056;
* hooksize: 3,5 mm (US: 4/E, UK: 9).
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
Love,
Marianne xx

Follow-up Friday

This past week I’ve been putting the finishing touches on what I think is my very last “Follow-up Friday”-project.
It’s hard to believe I’ve actually finished those 13 neglected, half or even less than half ready works in progress, even if it took me 6 months to do this.

While doing the “Follow-up Friday”-stuff, I even worked on a lot of other projects in these months as well (I’m still easily side-tracked…….). And they too – much to my surprise – have been finished!

It all started with this blog post in July …….
So, at the beginning of this new year, a “Follow-up Friday” overview seems to be in place, and since it’s looking to be a lengthy one – you might want to sit back, relax, grab yourself a tea or coffee – here we go!

1. Crochet Mood Blanket 2014
Started in January 2014, finished at the end of September 2015 …..2. Bétaille Blanket
First little squares were crocheted in May 2014, the blanket was finally finished late August 2015.
3. Blue Socks
These blue socks were my 4th pair ever – finished in July – and I couldn’t love them more.
4. Harlequin Blanket
Along the way, I decided not to continue with this project; I did not like the yarn with which I crocheted the little diamonds. Still loving a harlequin blanket, so I’m sure I’ll make one sometime.
5. Rustic Lace Square Blanket
Oops…… another one NOT finished …..
Since I’ve decided this is going to be a big blanket/bed spread, covering our 220×240 cm lits jumeaux (twin beds), it will be my “on going” project. I’ll need 110 squares and have 28 finished and joined ones, 3 finished yet not joined squares, plus 12 hearts.
My goal is to complete it during 2016!
6. The Simply Crochet Granny Squares
This is the wip I’m almost done with; first two rows of the border have been added, and I’m sure I’ll have it ready over the weekend. It was not that I didn’t want to wrap this one up – it’s just that I couldn’t come up with whát to do with the 29 squares that were issued in the app. And then they almost all had a different size ….. Thinking back to my “Homely Blanket”, I decided the only way to go was to make them all the same size, and take it from there. A baby/crib blanket is what it’s going to be.
After much deliberation (again…) I went for black as my joining color – a rather bold choice, but I really like how it’s turning out!
7. Triangle Cushion Cover
I’m sure you know how much I adore geometric crochet, and I loved crocheting my “Candy Cushion”!
8. Summer Shawl
The Summer Shawl ended up as my “Les Tourettes Shawl”, after the little French village where I crocheted the bigger part of it. It also led to two new cushion covers, ánd a new granny square design, my “Abby”.
9. Potholders for my mom
These were a reasonably quick and fun make. I love noticing how they’re really being used too!
10. The “No-Name-Yet”-shawl
It ended up as the “Rosebud Shawl”, after the little buds in the border. Designing this border definitely made up for the boring part of crocheting the body of the shawl. It’s soft and comfy, and I love wearing it!
11. Bridal Shawl no. 1
I so like seeing the new “mrs” for whom I crocheted this shawl wear it all the time – it’s wonderful when our work is being appreciated, isn’t it?
12. Bridal Shawl no. 2
The “Love&Kisses”-shawl is one of my absolute favorites – ever! I simply love everything about it: the pattern, the lacy border, the wonderful yarn, the color, and last but not least: the fact that it was a present for a friend who got married.
13. Special Shawl no. 3
This was a very special shawl indeed, the “Moya Star Shawl”! Asked by my sweet friend Heike, to test her lovely pattern (and translate it into Dutch), using some gorgeous Moya yarn – a very enjoyable project.
Now, this “Follow-up Friday”- journey was fun…… However, I think I’ll stay away from collecting too many wips in the future, even though I know how tough this will be!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Marianne xx

Treasury Tuesday

Weeks are zooming by, especially at this time of year, or so it seems.
It makes me even more appreciative of my little moments of “zen”: the time I spend crocheting and crafting.
If I experience any Christmas stress at all, it comes from trying to decide what to make for everyone. Once that decision’s made and the projects are underway, the joy (and peace of mind) settles in as well.

To keep myself – and hopefully you too – inspired, this time around I’ve collected a little bit of everything, declaring a nice crochet hodgepodge to be this week’s “Treasury Tuesday”‘s ‘theme’.

Don’t you agree that the mermaid tail blanket is absolutely adorable?
Luckily there’s still one little niece on my husband’s side of the family, and I think she would love this. So, I’ve just downloaded the pattern – her birthday is not until July, that should be an achievable deadline, right?
I also love the crochet blanket – I think it’s a beauty in all its simplicity, stitch ánd color wise.
Be sure to find your own creative “zen” moments this week!
Love,
Marianne xx

Follow-up Friday – Carter’s Chevron Blanket

Early Friday morning here …. a grey and wet one, low on light ……
I’m all comfortable though, coffee on hand, some Chopin playing via Spotify, my hairy assistant happily chewing on a bone right at my feet.
My content feelings are definitely linked to a rather big crochet project being finished, so this is a cheery “ta-dah” post (with lots of photos).
It also relates to the fact that I’m – finally – álmost done writing down the pattern/tutorial for the “Abby” square.
The latter is one of the 13 projects that were originally on the “Follow-up Friday”-wip list, and one of the very last ones to be accomplished. I’m planning on sharing “Abby” and her tutorial over the weekend.
After I crocheted a blanket for Quinn (more on that here), I promised Carter I would make him one too, but never got around to it. So ….. cheating on my own rules (no new projects, until the old wip list was done) I started his blanket on a spur a couple of weeks ago. When I saw this beautiful “Alize, Superlana, Midi” I couldn’t resist. Also, I needed a rather mindless crochet job on the side …..
And what a pleasure it was to work on this chevron – I’ve nothing but enjoyed it.
A big help was Carter cheering me on, telling me how awesome he thought his blanket was going to be. It’s great when our creativity is being appreciated, isn’t it? Here’s some details:

* size: 1.45 x 2.00 m (57 x 78 inches);
* weight: circa 1,6 kg (3,5 lbs);
* pattern: “Chevron Plaid”, by Ilaria Chiaratti, from the “Molly Makes Crochet”-book;
* yarn: “Alize Superlana Midi”, in colors 208, 60, 182, 21, 212, total of 17 skeins (100 gr);
* hooksize: 8 mm (L/11 US)
I tried two different kind of borders, but my client didn’t like either of them, so no border it is.

My next kind of mindless crochet project has already begun (I simply had to try some of that lovely Lana Grossa yarn that was in my yarntasting-goodie bag).
This week, when Carter lied underneath his chevron for the very first time, he texted me: “the blanket is super cool, comfy and chill – xxxx” ….. I love it when recipient and I are both pleased with a finished project ……
Wishing you a wonderful weekend,
love,
Marianne xx

Follow-up Friday – “Crochet Mood Blanket”

Well …. let’s just say there’s a first for everything …..
Soooo, how about a “Follow-up Friday”-post on a Saturday?

For a pretty organised and control-freakish kind of person like me, it was a big step to accept that “no”, I was not going to finish my “Crochet Mood Blanket”, ànd take photos of it, ànd put a blog post together yesterday…..
It was something Quinn said, that made it clear to me that this was actually ok – thank you, sweetheart!
On a totally non-related side-track: this sweetheart and I had a great time yesterday evening, attending the opening of the “Munch : Van Gogh” exhibition in the “Van Gogh Museum”……(oh, and this youTube-film is absolutely wonderful; informative is this one).
This is Quinn and I in the “Munch – The Scream”-photo booth at the exhibition; to activate the camera, you had to literally ‘scream’ ……

But: without further ado, let me present to you my “Crochet Mood Blanket”; started in 2014, finally finished in September of 2015!

If you want to read back as to how and why this blanket was begun, this is where you’ll want to go.
The pattern I used can be found here, with a little note that I adjusted the rectangle a tiny bit, so that two short sides had the same size as its long side. This allowed me to play around with the lay-out of the squares, when I commenced the joining.

Quite some thinking went into the border. At first I thought a simple border would be best for this colorful piece of crochet, but after a couple of tries I went for a more elaborate one and am absolutely happy with the way it turned out. “Boho” comes to mind, when I look at this blanket.

For the border I went down 0,5 mm to a 3 mm hook and did a simple round of black dc’s (UK: trebles). Second round with green was a sc (UK: dc) in between every 4th and 5th dc from the previous round, chain 3 – and repeated all around. Third round – with black again – I crocheted 4 dc’s in every chain3-loop (you can find a great tutorial for this so-called “block-stitch” here).
Inspired by this beautiful border on Ryane’s latest blanket , I crocheted two rounds (in orange and pink) using this stitch, and I love how these rounds give some reliëf to the border.
The last 3 rounds were an exact copy of the first 3, the bright blue being the accent color here.
When I posted this photo on Instagram, someone asked me why I was crocheting on three rounds at the same time? I do this to get a feel for the final lay-out – it’s not until I like what I see that I go ahead and crochet all around my blanket/cushion cover.
The details:
* number of squares: “only” 192 instead of 365 ….
* weight: 1248 grams (2 lbs, 12 oz)
* size: 115 x 225 cm (45,3 x 88,5 inches)
* yarn: all 100% cotton (Katia, Catania, Cotton8, Phildar, etc)

Do I like it? Oh, yesss! I’m very happy with the result. Also: very happy to have finished another old-wip. If I’m correct there’s only 3 projects left on the wip-list: the “Rustic Lace Square”-blanket – which is an ongoing project, so not really counting. Secondly, the Simply Crochet Squares (still no idea what to do with them …..). And then I need to write down the pattern for the square I designed to make my “Les Tourettes”-shawl.
The end is near ……

There’s one more thing I want to share here: my 4 favorites of last week’s “Craft As Therapy“-theme:
Top left: Mariana‘s beautiful crochet hexagon blanket;
Top right: Corinne‘s stunning hexi puffs/bee keepers quilt;
Bottom left: Sarah‘s gorgeous knitted, double sided baby blanket;
Bottom right: Tina‘s very uniqe and fabulously made candy skull lead picture.

Next week I’m taking a short break, having been invited by my brother and his husband to come and visit them in Cannes: how awesome is that?!
Wishing you a wonderful weekend and week ahead!
Love,
Marianne xx

Follow-up Friday

And yet another week has flown by ….. a week filled with lots of ER/hospital visits, and not too much crochet, I’m afraid. Luckily the hospital visits led up to Carter having his big reconstructive foot surgery today (as I type this message, actually……).
The external frame will be removed, and all things necessary to make his foot as good as new will be taken care of as well.
Despite the long road ahead of him, we’re confident he’ll eventually be A-OK again.
I was able to work a bit on two old wips, the first one being the triangle cushion cover – the second one the ” Rustic Lace Square”-blanket.
Almost all triangle pieces are done, so assembly is the next (and last) step.
As far as the rustic lace squares are concerned, I’ve finished 3, and have 4 incomplete ones. Spending the next couple of days with Carter in the hospital, I’m assuming I’ll be adding quite a few more ……
Wishing you a fun weekend,

love,
Marianne xx