Month: <span>February 2017</span>

You may not have heard of Sixty Million Trebles or maybe even know what a treble is in this context? Neither did I till a few months ago.

It’s really simple though, a woman who loves crochet heard that there were sixty million refugees fleeing Syria without much to keep them warm. So she had an idea. She started a Facebook group asking people to crochet (or knit) a blanket to donate to the refugees with each maker counting the Trebles – a type of crochet stitch – in their blanket and adding a tag to state the number. The goal is to have sixty million trebles overall, each stitch representing a life.

All the blankets will be temporarily joined together to hopefully make the world’s largest blanket! The centre of this enormous blanket will be comprised of crocheted flags of each country! Once it’s been measured as hopeful the world’s largest blanket it will be divided up back into the individual blankets and shipped out to the refugees.

So this is what I’ve been doing the past few months- crocheting a blanket and two flags. I signed up for Guyana and Singapore because they looked interesting to make but not too difficult! It’s taken me a while though as I have to have rest periods when crocheting a lot

And here is the result!

My blanket!

Crochet flag of Singapore and Guyana and a purple crochet blanket

My flags and blanket

The idea has really taken off and people everywhere are making and sending blankets into various collection points in the UK whilst we wait to arrive at the magic Sixty Million!

So if you read this and you crochet or knit it’s not too late to join in! Just type Sixty Million Trebles into Facebook and join the group and get hooking! (or Knitting if you really can’t Crochet!)

One stitch – one life.

Crocheted a cowl in Red Heart ‘Autumn’ or ‘Fall’ as it’s called in USA!

I’ve been fascinated recently by the planned pooling technique in crochet! It’s a method of crochet which involves carefully counting and manipulating your stitches to force an Argyle type pattern. It’s not easy! I actually used 3 diffferent hook sizes to get the patterning to work as I kept needing to use more or less yarn up in within the rows!

There is a very helpful Facebook group called Planned Pooling in Crochet with lovely, helpful members who advise and support newbie after newbie tearing their hair out and crying “it’ll never work! I just can’t do it!” It’s definitely worth joining if you want to try the pooling technique. This Pooling calculator is very useful too, although it’ll mean more to you if you read through the Facebook group posts first!

I used Red Heart super saver to make this cowl as not many UK yarns will pool – the sequence of colour change in the yarns has to be just right and even some Red Heart will not pool. Fortunately the Autumn shade above pools relatively easily. I bought a few different balls of this type of yarn whilst I was about it as it took ages to find a supplier in UK!

Below is the start of another scarf using Red Heart Supersaver in Wildflower. I love this colourway – it’s very pretty! The only downside of Planned Pooling is you can’t really watch TV whilst doing it as it need concentration!! Hence it will take me a very long time to make another complete scarf and much as I’d like a blanket in it ….. not sure the old brain could sustain the focus!😀😀😀

Yarn in purple, yellow and green making an argyle patttern

The start of a new Planned Pooling project

So if you fancy a new project and you can already crochet quite well I’d recommend Planned Pooling – but a word of warning – once you start you just might not be able to stop! (And you might miss your favourite TV programme!) 😜

Crocheted a cowl in Red Heart ‘Autumn’ or ‘Fall’ as it’s called in USA!

Monthly Archives: February 2017

Sixty Million Trebles!

Planned Pooling in Crochet