A stripe a day, keeps the grannies away!

Hello Lovelies!! Hope your all having a colourful weekend?!
Look at what the post man delivered earlier in the week!

17 scrummy balls of Stylecraft DK!! I ordered it from Masons last week and was very surprised to have it delivered three days later!!! VERY SPEEDY INDEED!!!
I love to order these Stylecraft assorted packs. Not only are they full of great colours, but they are also amazing value! This bundle of 17 different colours cost me only £25.50 (plus postage), If that isn't a bargain I don't know what is?!

Now I don't want to sound like a 'Yarn Snob', but I don't usually go for acrylic yarns.
My favourite yarns include a nice Cashmere or Merino, so soft and snuggly. The problem with always using fancy yarn.... is the price. It's soooo damn expensive.
So when the budget is a little tight, I find myself looking for cheaper alternatives. Acrylic yarn tends to tick the boxes in terms of price.
The problem I have with SOME acrylic yarns is that quite often  I find them to be just a little too plasticy for my liking. I want my yarn to feel luxuriously soft and not scrunchy and cheap.
For me Stylecraft fits the medium perfectly. Its great value but it doesn't feel like I've dropped down in quality. Its feels lovely and soft. There is such large selection of colours that you can't help but be drawn to it.
This is why I've used Stylecraft for many projects, Its acrylic that doesn't feel like acrylic. Look how wonderfully colourful it is when worked up!:

I ordered my Stylecraft with the intention of making another Granny Stripe Blanket (using the Attic24 pattern). A colleague of mine (Dani) had seen my crochet work and was so smitten with the Granny Stripe, that she asked me to make her one. I'm not usually so keen on making items for people when they know about it. I feel under pressure to get the project finished fast. Instead I like to make a project secretly and give it as a surprise, that way I'm under no obligation to get the project finished by a certain time.
This was different, It was for Dani!
Dani works at the theatre and is part of the wigs and make-up department. She is such a lovely woman! Always has a smile on her face and is so fun and crazy.
Dani and I help each other with our language learning. She speaks to me in English and I'll correct her when she gets stuck. Then she does the same for me in German, it's a win win Situation!
So of course when Dani asked me for a bright (like her personality) blanket, I got straight to work.

Dennis and I have both made granny stripes before. I made mine with Merino the first time around:

Dennis made his with the Stylecraft pack:

As I've just bought the Stylecraft pack, I'm going for a Granny Stripe similar to Dennis'.
Dani told me that there is no rush for the blanket so I'm making this a sideline project. A project that I'm always working on, but that doesn't always have to be my main focus. I hope that this way I won't get bored of it and will have time to work on other projects. :-)

With that in mind I've decided to do just one stripe a day. A stripe is taking only about 20 minutes to complete, so I should be able to fit easily one per day.

With the amount of stripes I'm hoping this blanket will be finished around early September. I'm thinking that's perfect! It will be finished in time for Autumn. So Dani will have a bright and gorgeous blanket to snuggle in during the cold Autumn and Winter months. I cant wait to give it to her!!

There we have it!! Day seven and I'm mid row on my 7th stripe. I'm giving the random colour approach a try, let's see how that turns out!

Have a glorious Sunday!!
Matt xxx

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Y.A.R.N. Give Away!

Hello lovely people!

As promised we're giving you the chance to win some of our favourite yarn!
We have 6 gorgeous cones of luxurious merino wool to give away as a set.

We have picked six of our favourite shades, each one weighing 200 grams.

Certainly that's enough to make something pretty FABULOUS!!! Perhaps a throw? some shawls?........or a gazzilion colourful flowers!

If that wasn't enough, we also have a selection of bright rainbow shades of 'Universal Cotton' by Wolle Rodel.  Which we will be giving away to our second place winner.

We decided to share this cotton with you, because it's one of our favourite "go to" yarns, that we use for small and colourful projects around the house. Isn't it divine?!

This cotton is perfect for bright cheery amigurumi or quick projects, such as these pretty flowers Dennis made using the pattern by Lucy at Attic24.

We have seven vibrant shades of this glorious cotton to share with you, and we cant wait to see what you will dream up and make with it!

Sooo....What do you have to do to win this yummy yarn?

Now we've come up with the idea that to win this yarn, all you have to do is come up with a little poem or a collection of words. The only rule is you have to use the letters Y, A, R and N. It doesn't have to be anything big or crazy, just a little something creative and fun.

So for example:

You could just write four words that relate to your passion for crafting:

Or maybe a little rhyming poem:

Or perhaps something that describes just how much of a crafting obsession you have:

It can be as long or a short as you like. As silly or serious as you like......however and whatever you like! 

You can even get REALLY creative and make your poem/words into a drawing or maybe fashion it out of yarn. You can then send us a photo of it.

Remember though......this is just for FUN!!

Once you have your little Y.A.R.N poem/words/project, you can either leave it in the comments box below or email it to us at: accordingtomattblogspotcom@gmail.com

(If you leave it in the comment box below, please make sure that we have a way of contacting you. Either a link to your blog or to your blogger profile).

We will mail the yarn to anywhere in the world and are quite excited to see where it may end up!

The closing date for your Y.A.R.N entries, will be Sunday 15th April. 

We will announce the winner on the following Monday, once we have chosen our favourite.

The 1st prize winner will win the luxurious Merino cones and the 2nd place winner will receive the playful Universal Cotton.

We are very excited to see what you may come up with! 

We hope you have fun!!!!!!

Matt and Dennis xxx

edit: After a couple of comments about our email address not working, we've changed the link. Sorry for the inconvenience!

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Wool Factory SALE!

We've been a little bit excited about this for the last week and today it was finally the big day! The Wool Factory in Hamburg, where we buy a lot of our yarn, started their sale! This happens twice a year and lasts for a week. We did not know what to expect since we had never visited one of their sales before.

As we were on the bus towards the factory we noticed a lot of women with big empty shopping bags and trolleys. We joked that they were all on their way to the factory to stock up on cheap wool! As it turned out, they all were! We figured it was going to be busy and laughed at the thought of us all fighting over the same yarn. It turned out to be very civilized and they even had coffee and cake!

The Yarn Factory is normally one (quite small) shop, but because of the big sale they opened up a part of the warehouse to the public. Five hundred square meters of yarn on sale! Amazing!
Shopping at the Factory normally works by picking out a yarn type and color. You than have them wind it on a cone in the desired amount of ply's and weight. This normally takes some time, and as it was sale week, this was not possible. Instead all of the sale-cones were already wound into a certain thickness and a set weight. This was a little disappointing as we were hoping to get our yarn in the thickness we like to work with. With the sale being this big, it was however understandable and they still had loads to choose from!

The yarn was still plied quite thin so that it's easy to go up a hook/needle size by buying a second one or even a third one (this means you just work from 2 or 3 cones at the same time). The suggested needle sizes were all written on each box of cones.

We sort of expected a chaos of yarn, but it was organized so very very efficiently! Neatly stacked boxes, all labeled with: price per 50 grams, type of yarn (or blend) and recommended needle sizes for 1, 2 or 3 cones. It made it very clear to find what you were looking for!

There was cotton, merino, pure wool, linen, alpaca, lamb, silk, cashmere, and all possible combinations of these. The color choices per type of yarn were not as vast as we hoped for. But if you were planning to work on projects that don't need more than one or two colors, it was easy picking! 

We managed to find some great bargains! Most yarns were priced down to 1 euro per 50 grams! We also got a great deal on some angora/merino blend for 1.20 euro per 50 grams.

Once we filled our trolley with all of the sale yarn we desired, we then had to go to the main store to pay. The main store is where all the normal prized yarn is being sold. As normal there was much more choice of color and the possibility of choosing ply and weight. As you can see, a lot more (vibrant) colors to choose from!

Want to see what we bought at the sale?

 
Not all yarns were labeled, as they were one of a kind so we ended up buying a couple of cones of which we have no clue what type of yarn it is. But does it really matter... :-)?
The cones above are about 1 kg each.

Another 800 grams of a very delicate green!

1 kg of lovely faded pink and 2 kg's (1 cone is not in the picture) of white (can you ever have enough?) Both pure wool!

 Matt chose 4 cones of a very soft and warm rose. It's pure merino!

We really went a little bit crazy buying all this yarn, but it made sense to take advantage of the ridiculously low prices!

Do you want to see what we bought in the expensive part of the store?

Six bright and gorgeous colors of fabulous yarn! It's 90% wool and 10% nylon! So very very soft and squishy! Wouldn't you like to get your hands on that?

Many of you have expressed an interest in the yarn cones we use and have mentioned how they're not available in your areas, so we have decided to buy this yarn for... YOU!!!

Over the next week we will explain how you could be the new owner of 1200 grams (200 grams per color) of this lovely yarn! We're very excited to be giving this away, and can't wait to share HOW very soon!

If you have any crazy yarn sale experiences, we would love to hear them!
Hope you are all having a lovely start of the week!

Matt & Dennis xxx

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Scraps...

Over the last two years, Matt and I have been working on many many projects. The problem with having two people crocheting a lot, is that you end up with a big collection of left-over yarn! A couple of days ago we had a big sort out of all our yarn and found out how much this actually was. After emptying out all the places where we store our yarn we found out that it's enough to fill up a big garbage bag! But is a garbage bag really the right place for all this forgotten yarn? It's a bit sad to just throw it all away, but then again, what can you make from these tiny little amounts of yarn?

I started to see a little project in this bunch of happy colors! A blanket! I started to experiment a little with some different squares and even tried to knit one! My knitting is terribly slow however and I was sure I would give up on the blanket after 1 day, so I just went back to the very basics: A simple and plain granny square consisting of 3 rounds.

I showed my project to Matt after I'd made about 4 squares, and he came up with the idea that we could both work on this blanket at the same time! I was thrilled by this, since we never work on something together. Every crocheter has their own tension, and the stitches might come out a little different, but with a blanket like this, it doesn't matter! That's the fun of it! Granny squares can adjust quite a lot because of the spaces in between the stitches. You can use a lot of different types of yarn, thick or thin, acrylic or natural fibers. Of course you have to watch out a tiny little bit, no crazy bulky yarn, and no lace weight yarn, but other than that, pretty much any yarn will do!

We chose to join all the squares as we go, which makes it a very easy project to work on! And did I mention how fast it goes when you work on it together? We join one square after the other, and sometimes even have to wait for each other to finish the joining. In 2 days we managed to make 63 squares! I'm really excited about how colourful it's turning out and I really enjoy going through all the scraps and bits of yarn, because a lot of them bring back memories of other projects we've worked on!

It's also a great project to work on besides your other projects. It doesn't take long to add a couple of squares every day or every week. And as long as you use one colour per square, you don't have so much ends to sew in!

Having a crazy bunch of left-over yarn suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore. I think we've found a good solution for it!

What do you do with your left over yarn?

Dennis xxx

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