Monday 6 July 2015

Ta-Dah! The Lily Pond!

Hello everyone!

Last week just got completely away from me - between Kiah's birthday, multiple movie outings, the fatigue (justifiably) getting cranky with all the fun things I was doing, going to the lake for the weekend AND still arguing with PayPal and Ravelry about our new patterns... I didn't blog!

But I did get my Lily Pond Afghan all finished, washed, and blocked, so I do have something to share with you today :D 


The Lily Pond, designed by Jane Crowfoot, was a Crochet-A-Long held in conjunction with Stylecraft Yarns. The event doesn't officially finish until next week, but I have been helping Stylecraft with a few secret projects, and had access to the final few patterns through that. 



Jane Crowfoot is a super famous crochet designer, and I love Stylecraft Special DK, so what could possibly go wrong!? It turns out, quite a lot - the Facebook group/s had a rocky start, the patterns were sometimes very hard to decipher, information was missing, and the translation between UK and US terms didn't go very well. I did not get the same great joy of working through this CAL as I did with Sophie's Universe, but that is a very very high bar! 


I didn't choose to go with the recommended yarn colours - it was a bit dark and dreary for me, especially the blues and greens. For a full list of the yarns I used, see my Ravelry Project page :) 


After all the dramas, I do actually love the outcome! The blocking was lots of fun - we ended up using about 300 pins to get all the flower petals to sit nicely!! I am so lucky to have a husband who supports my crazy crafty endeavours, although I think he was starting to doubt this after his third trip down to the junk shop to buy more pins... 


This afternoon, Kiah, Lily and I took a relaxing stroll around Anderson Park (the other side of the bay at Meadowbank from our apartment), taking photos of Lily with the river, the lovely sandstone and quite a lot of enthusiastic clover.


The colours and pattern almost danced in the dappled sunlight - it really does look like a real lily pond! 


Then, just as we were getting in the car to leave, Kiah said "Look! Under that tree with the undergrowth looks almost like a pond! One last photo?" 


One last photo :) 

20 comments :

  1. It really is stunning, I love the sort of rippley effect. And well done for keeping up with (ahead of ??) the CAL :)
    Jillxo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jill! Once I had all the patterns I just couldn't resist getting it done and finished - the pacing was just sooo slowww...

      Delete
  2. Beautiful pictures, Michelle! So glad you worked your way through all the problems. This blanket is gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Andrea! Taking the photos was at least half the fun :D

      Delete
  3. Beautiful! I like the colours you've chosen and the end result is a stunner

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Helen! Now I have to decide what to do with it...

      Delete
  4. It really is gorgeous, hopefully worth all the stress along the way :-) The colours you have chosen work so well. x

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, it's one of the prettiest crochet items I've ever seen!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Valentina! I wasn't so excited about the original, so very very pleased with how mine came out :) The colours make such a difference!

      Delete
  6. SOOOOOO beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  7. It's really lovely. Well done for getting through all the obstacles and getting it finished.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Gillian :) I'm so glad it's done!

      Delete
  8. How lovely, sometimes tweaking the colours in a pattern makes all the difference. Well done on working out the problems. Hx

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi Michelle, I just LOVE your colour choices - so much like a pond but brighter. The Stylecraft business sounds exciting. I can't wait to find out what you are up to there! :-)
    Your Lily blanket is worth celebrating! xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jodie! I'm really happy with it :)

      Delete