A crochet weekend.

At some point earlier this year I booked a crochet colour work weekend away with my younger daughter, Lucy. She became interested in crochet some time ago and has made a crocheted blanket for her brother, a monkey as a present and is currently working on a large sized octopus. The blanket is made with squares, but not just the standard granny squares and she was eager to learn new techniques. Many years ago I used to do a lot of crochet, especially when working night duty on the wards as a student. It is so much easier to pick up and put down without losing stitches than knitting. In fact it seems to be quite a popular hobby with nurses in the UK. The blanket below was crocheted by Lucy for her brother.

This was the  crocheted granny squares I'd started during covid lockdown

This second blanket used up the left over blocks and I had to make some more to finish it off. I think I like this one better than the first on.  Although it uses the same pattern I love the randomness of the colours.

The weekend crochet workshop took place at Blunsdon House Hotel near Swindon. I forgot to take a photo so I have used one of their photos from their website. There was a lot of outside space but unfortunately we had wet weather on Saturday due to the tail end of storm Claudia. Today, the day started very foggy but had improved by lunchtime.

We shared a room with twin beds which were very comfortable. There was a seating area with a table and the room was very spacious. The shower was also easy to control.

There were 16 of us attending the weekend and we soon got chatting. I was surprised to find that many of the women worked for or had worked for the health service or social services. We all got on well with each other and so the weekend was a lot of fun. We shared jokes and stories but also helped each other as some of the patterns were difficult to grasp.

The theme was crochet colour work and Anna the tutor made it as easy as possible and was great fun to work with. She had a fabulous sense of humour. On Saturday morning we started by making a fair isle square. This managed to fox me completely, even with both Anna and Lucy's help. After lunch I had another try and managed to make the square. I have no idea why I found it so difficult. Anna also taught us to read a crochet pattern which is written as a picture. This is the Fair Isle pattern.

Next we worked on Overlay Mosaic squares. This clicked with me very easily and I enjoyed working on this square but I still need to finish it. There is a second overlay Mosaic pattern I want to complete as well.

Anna also taught us how to create this central double crochet Fair Isle square. Central double crochet is a stitch that is also known as waistcoat stitch or as knit stitch as it looks like knitted stocking stitch.

There were lots of hints and tips on starting squares and joining the rounds which I found very useful.

On Sunday morning we all tried to finish the squares we had worked on during Saturday and then we moved on to Mosaic crochet. We started with inset Mosaic crochet and also tried overlay mosaic crochet. I found the mosaic crochet much easier to learn or it could be my brain was more receptive on Sunday.

Whilst we were on our crochet weekend both Lucy and I treated ourselves to a spa treatment. The spa facilities were excellent and I really enjoyed my full body massage. Lucy enjoyed her full body wrap. During the evenings of our stay we were a little antisocial although we did join a few of the other participants for a drink in the bar. Once back in our room we watched some television whilst finishing our squares and chatting. Then we snuggled into our beds to read before settling down to sleep.

We finished the workshop at 4 on Sunday afternoon and on our way to the car I took a photo of a tree. The weather was closing in so it is a little difficult to see the two carved owls in the tree trunk and the large owl on the top.

Our journey home was uneventful and reasonably quick. There was quite a lot of traffic heading back to London at the end of the weekend but there were no hold ups or problems. Although I love going away on trips I do love it when I arrive back home. Our two dogs were very pleased to see us and made out that we had been away for months rather than a weekend. It took a while for them to calm down.

Having had such a good weekend we are planning to do another workshop next year. We haven't decided what we would like to try but there are a lot of things to chose from. I hope you've had as good a weekend as we've had.

Take care

Lyndsey