Yarn Review | Aire Valley DK

 If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen that I have a new design out in this month's Crochet Now (Issue 22).

Back to School Sweater CAL celebration!

What an amazing few months Tamara, Crafty Escapism  and I have had planning and running our Back to School Sweater CAL (crochetalong) and blog hop. We'll be closing the FO (finished objects) thread on Ravelry shortly and running the random number generator for prizes. As we write there are 53 gorgeous finished objects in there and/or tagged with #BackToSchoolSweaterCAL on Instagram. Seven makers have made two garments and two speedy makers have made three in the eight week period of the CAL from September 16th to November 17th. Incredible!

We've loved hanging out in the Ravelry chatter thread, kindly hosted by the wonderful Fay of the Crochet Circle Podcast, and over 50 of us have shared our garment making experiences together. We even had a frogging party where a fair few of us, Tamara and myself included, had to frog our garments to get them to fit correctly!  There have been over 400 super photos posted on Instagram with the hashtag #BackToSchoolSweaterCAL

Many participants have been making sweaters for the first time. We've had comments on how they now see themselves as garment makers as a result of taking part. We've also received lots of feedback about how useful the blog hop posts have been (details here just in case you missed it (Back to School Sweater CAL 2017). This has made the whole crochetalong so worthwhile for us, SO much better than just making our own garments by ourselves.

We'd like to say a huge thank you to all the bloggers who wrote a blog article (or two!) for us; JoJoTwinkletoes, The Crochet Project, Sam of SingASimpleMelody, Fay of the Crochet Circle Podcast and Knit It Hook It Craft It and Marta or MrsDaftSpaniel and for all the folk who have donated prizes; Marta, The Crochet Project, Fay, Rosina from Zeens and Roger, Yael from Emyahandmade and Lisa too. A special extra thank you goes to Fay for letting us host our CAL and FO thread in her Crochet Circle Podcast group.

And a huge thank you and congratulations to all the people who have taken part and made a wonderful handmade garment of their own!!! Let us know if you'd like to do it all over again next year!!?

Helen and Tamara x

Wool and me

For many of us, November equals Wovember, a celebration of all things wool online during the month of November. The theme of this year's Wovember is 'woolness - where wool meets wellness' - a subject close to my heart.

I wanted to share some thoughts today about what wool means to me...

5 quick crochet Christmas makes

Can we talk about Christmas yet?! The calendar has turned over to November so I'm sure many crafters will be starting to think, if they aren't already, about Christmas makes. Today I thought I'd share 5 quick tried and tested Christmas crochet projects with you.