First commission!

I'm quite excited today. An "internet friend", i.e. someone I've never met but I'm quite good friends with on social media, gave me my first paid commission today. Well, he sent me a message saying he was willing to pay for my time and skill! I'm going to count that. 

Well, we'll see. A few people have urged me to flog my creations, which is an attractive idea. For me, there are 2 objections.

1. that an enjoyable, therapeutic hobby becomes work and therefore stops being do much fun; and
2. organisation and meeting deadlines is not my strongest suit. 

There's also the confidence aspect. Is my work good enough?

Anyway, said pal said he really liked a rainbow scarf that I made. I must add that I have no knowledge of making a rainbow anything, but I'll take his word for it. I've ordered some really nice Style Craft rainbow yarn from Deramore's and I'll whip up a good long Tunisian scarf. I really like the look of Tunisian for men's items, rather than your usual double/treble crochets. 

Still haven't made up my mind over whether/how much to charge him. We'll see what the finished project looks like and how I feel about it. Maybe a compromise of "mates rates" of cost of yarn and postage perhaps? 

A shrug of the shoulders

Well, I've embarked on making Christmas presents for friends, but instead of the usual scarves, hats and shawls and occasional blanket I've become much more ambitious and am trying my hand at garments.

Right now I'm working on the Drops Country Rose Shrug. I've never made one of these before. It seems pretty simple. A plain rectangular panel for the back, make big chain spaces for the arm holes then crochet in the round. Make two sleeves and sew 'em on. 

I followed the directions and my gauge is fine. But the edge piece done in the round that folds back for the collar just did not look or feel big enough. I measured carefully, but there definitely weren't the same number of rows in the increase section as in the photo. I'd finished the edging section and decided to pull back all the increases to the first one and add another repeat to each set of the increases. If that makes sense. Basically two repeats, increase on the second repeat. Now I'm doing three repeats, increase on the third repeat.

I must say, the shell edging really does set off the shrug nicely.

I'm kind of dreading the sleeves. My eyes did glaze over whilst reading the instructions for the sleeves. Drops patterns are great but for me, and my skill level, I do find it's a case of trial and error to work out exactly what they're asking for sometimes. I think you do need to be experienced to work them. For me with a lot of patterns, they can only make sense when you're working them. 

But it's a really nice pattern and I'm making it with Red Heart Anne Geddes baby DK in a "shades of" lilac yarn. Really nice to work with.