Flower Bed group

 As some of you may have noticed a lot of people who blog about crochet have been making flowers recently like Lucy at Attic 42 and and Suz at Suz's place. In fact so many people have been having fun with them that a new group has been started for anyone who wants to make a blanket of some sort out of flowers. It's called the Flower Bed and if well worth following to see just how different the same (or similar) designs can be when done in different yarns and sizes.

I have done a blog post over there about trying out some versions myself. The one above is what I'm planning to make more of to make into a blanket. It isn't quite the Japanese design many people are using but you can find the pattern for this design on the Flower Bed as it is a variant designed by Suz. I have five colours of chenille yarn, three in variants of pink/rust as well as the yellow and green.

While trying out options I also did a version in 2 strands of double knit which I really like, well perhaps not the colours I picked so much but the design is nice. This was done with a 6mm hook and is really quite thick and snuggly.

 From that sample and Tom's comment it looked like a coaster for a teapot a second plan was hatched.
This is where I have got to so far.

It is a different design again and was sort of winged last night while roleplaying so once I have made sure it works properly I will write it up. It comes out about 10" across and I plan to make several as a set of spring coloured placemats !

Considering I normally lean towards smaller rather than larger I am surprised to find I am enjoying making something so big and chunky.

Trainers and that sort of thing

I'm not really a trainer type person though I have always had a soft spot for Converses so when I spotted the anniversary leather jacket converse on someone else's blog I thought it looked very cool, though well out of my price bracket. They are modelled on a leather jacket with zips and stitching and are great.

This of course got me doing a few searches on related things and these days you can get converses in pretty much any design you want though some are very limited editions including most of the 100 year celebration editions.

I like the Who union jack ones, some how they feel less associated with the negative side of nationalism here than say the Doc Martin ones. I don't know why to be honest it's just a gut reaction.You can get ones that look like they are covered in paint !
or design your own on the Converse site.

Just to prove that I looked at other makes too here are some Nike in liberty prints.. just right for the fabricophiles among us :)