Rectangle

Crocheting a granny rectangle can be quite tricky... and there are loads of variations for it (my first formula inspired by rectangle granny square i saw in Blair Stokers grannysquare sampler and a different approach for granny rectangle by Sue Rivers and probably many more I don't even know about) ... the latest revelation in this matter looks like this!

misshaped granny square!

Anyone who has ever tried to make a blanket out of mismatched size squares will know my pain of weird spots where nothing seems to fit...
There's always a possibility to make about a million small squares or use a rectangle here and there .. eventually get a straight line for a bigger square and after a while start that same cycle again.
sometimes it can be fun but most of the times it just gets on my nerves..
- why I am telling you all of this?
- I have found another way to fill the gaps! ;)

Let's welcome the misshaped granny square in to the BigBrightBlanket family!

The trick for making a misshaped granny square is to figure out the length of a starting chain and thickness or the rounds necessary.

2nd edition of my flower square :)

First scheme and tips. 
It works when background yarns are a bit thinner than the flower yarns.

Photo of a new and better square!

Now I have found that most of the times last two rows work better like this so I refreshed the scheme ->

As you can probably see that I have "painted over" the previous scheme .. I was too lazy to draw it from beginning just to change the last two rows so I put on a new piece of paper, cut a hole in it for the rows that won't change and then draw the last two rows...

Around a square !

I am in the middle of a chair cover and wanted to show off ->

I am using yarn leftovers from my summer bag, but I will need more .. as it turns out the chair is pretty big :D

If you want to make something like this yourself then read further ;) I have made a pretty lame photos of the scheme as it advances ... I hope it will help :)

Easter bunny is on his way!

Easter is coming!!!
Have you noticed the spring in the air?
I feel a bit like a cat .. well I am not planning to scream aloud in the yard at night - it would be too creepy, but I love the long walks in the middle of the day with my babyboy in the sling :) unfortunately the snow is gone here but temperature is somewhere around zero and sun is shining so inviting that even the plants and trees are beginning to wake up after the long sleep... that's definitely an upside for a spring :) I really love winter though .. So tomorrow we are going to the mountains! a week in Slovakia, mountains full of snow, snowboarding all day long ... it's gonna be legendary!!!

But before we leave I wanted to introduce you all with our Easter bunny! ;)
At first I wanted to make a nice basket for the colored eggs .. but with this yarn that would take up more time than it should so I made something like a bottle warmer for an Easter wine :)

In the background of this picture you can see our vintage wallpaper ..
It's a bit depressing because it's blue and ripped in some parts..
I hope we will get it changed soon :)
BUT THE BUNNY BOTTLE IS SO CUTE! :))

The scheme for bunny ->

The only problem with this is that the crochet stitches is not right on top of each other and after a while you might think that the bunny is kind of falling ... This happens because I am crocheting around the bottle not forward/backward..

and a short picture tutorial for color changing ;)
1st step 
you crochet with both yarns at te same time.. well not exactly but you crochet over the yarn you do not use at the moment so when the time comes to change the color it's right there!

Diagonal color change

Usually granny square consists of loads of colorful yarns that are changed after each row. But I propose a different approach!
Lets change the color in the corner ... so you would get a granny square that looks like this, or that, or ... ;)

Lacy granny square

I present to you the newest block in the town!
Lets welcome the Lacy granny square ;)

It is fun, simple and supercute if I may say so myself :)
And it will be a great addition to my BigBrightBlanket.

Blanket of the hearts

I found an inspiration for this blanket in photos of @stephanie_linden (fellow instagrammer).
I changed the heart motif and a layout a bit but kept the main idea :)
This is going to be a summer blanket for my adorable baby boy Oliver. I chose a very thin cotton yarn because I thought that with all the other projects I'm currently working on I'll be lucky if this one will get finished till next summer.
This is the teaser photo that I made before I started to think about possibility of picture tutorial.. right about now I have two more rows of delightful hearts :)

And here comes the scheme if you would like to make one yourself ->

and as addition for the scheme here is a picture tutorial as well.. :)

1st step 
Take a background yarn and make a chain that is as long as you want your blanket of hearts to be wide.
The trick in this is that the amount of chains must divide with 8 without balance (I am not sure it's the right term... hopefully this explains it better -> amount of chains necessary = 8x )
And crochet 1st line of double crochets as well :)

I love math ! =]

I was inspired by the blairs grannysquaresampler. I had newer thought of rectangle granny square before and it made me think ... what is the amount of chains necessary to make a rectangle that fits the gap in a blanket?
I was obsessed for a while, I drew some rectangles starting from the outer edge and counted the chains in the beginning. And the more I drew the clearer it got. And that is when the formula was born!

• x - longest edge (I am counting the holes or typical joining points of the typical granny square)
• y - shortest edge
• z - edge length difference z=x-y 
• B - the chains needed for the beginning or middle

B=|4z-1|

btw, the rounds needed to make the rectangular granny square (R) can be caunted too ->
R=y-1

for example:
I need a square that is 4*9
so the x=9, y=4
that means z=9-4=5
B = 4*5-1 = 19
R = 4-1 = 3

this is the scheme for the middle of rectangle and the first round.

The dots are chains, but the small circle is loose chain (it will be needed to form the corners so it will have to hold 9 double crochet stitches!).

To understand the formula better I will show you step by step how I make one of the needed squares for BigBrightBlanket.

light star-shaped blanket

As I was making my first star-shaped blanket for my moms birthday I was astonished by how much yarn it absorbs ... it took me loads of yarn and time to finish it.. and it is still smaller than I imagined it would be, but as I ran out of time it will have to do and instead of full size blanket this one will be just a leg wormer during winter TV watching evenings... 
I was quite disappointed and then it hit me! I should have made it lighter, and it would have been bigger! so I started a new star-shaped blanket to test my theory of the holes...

not your typical granny square*

I am happy to tell you all that I have finally started to join the blocks from my tinytower!!!
I wanted to make the beginning of the joining even more special so I created a special squre - my own flower block!!!

and I came up with a name for the blanket too - BigBrightBlanket :)

So here comes the scheme and few tips along the way :)

star-shaped blanket

As fellow instagrammers now, my newest addiction is crocheted stars .. the blue one is going to become a star-shaped blanket for my moms 55th birthday.. so for the first time I actually have a deadline for crocheting!

and If you want to make your own you might need the scheme ->

It was the first time I actually drew a scheme myself (I had no idea it was so hard!!!) It is far from perfect, but I think as long as it works it's good :)
and practice makes perfection, so I will practice the art of scheme drawing as well :)

Artificial snowflake

Usually around this time ewerything around is white, cowered in snow, but his year winter is unusually warm - no snow for us jet (well 2 days before Ventspils was cowered in snow, but this morning it started to rain and everything melted) .. Newertheless this is a joyfull and quiet time of year .. we baked gingerbread and many more aromatic yum-yum' s, decorated the house and tree (a werry small one this year), helped Santa' s gnomes with giftwrapping (I think I enyojed this part the most) ..
and now I am crocheting a snowflake .. just to be able to sit still for a while :)
I thought of this a while ago, but finnaly found the time for crocheting ..

I found this crocheting scheme here.
it is a russian site, but I think you don't need to know any russian to find a crocheting scheme there for your next masterpiece ;)

When I went into the shop to buy some yarn for my snowfalke I couldn't stop looking at orange colours so - this jear my snowflake is going to be bright orange :) (I would like to say snowflakes but I already know that this year there will be just one, majbe next jear I will start to prepare earlier and then there will be more hopefully white)
And this is how it looks in my window ->

I made some minor alterations in the scheme and will probably tell you about them later, but now we are off to church for some corrals..
Merry Xmas and a happy NY to all of you! ;)

Baby Blanket

this is a work in progress ... it's gonna be a crocheted blanket for my little miracle, who is dancing in my tommy right now :)
I have chosen 5 clews of different colors (grey, light brown, dark brown and to lighten it up yellow and green as well). Right now I have crocheted about half of the needed granny squares well, maybe less ...
this is how they look so far ->

I will probably need some more clews to finish it... It looks like the dark brown is gonna be the first to end up ..
somewhere in between this process I understood that I have been crocheting them after wrong scheme :/
but oh, well.. this time it will work too, because squares are quite small (just 3 rows) so they still look quite flat (I better won't imagine what would have happend if I chose to crochet 2 more rows..).
I will show you only the right crocheting scheme ->

I borrowed this scheme somewhere from the internet and adjusted for my way of making granny squares ...
unfortunately in the middle of my so called drawing I lost the link to original source ... 

Each color in the scheme represents new row (except the middle one witch is beginning and made from the same yarn as first actual row) and different yarn color.