Green fingers

When I was a little girl my grandparents owned a working farm. With lots of animals, few hectares of land, orchard, few bee hives and gorgeous vegetable garden with small green houses for tomatoes and cucumbers. I was living in the city with my parents but during every school holiday I would spend with my grandparents on their farm. As a little girl I would round around and play with other kids from the village but as I was growing up I started to help out a lot more around the farm, especially with the harvest and animals. I would also very often plant vegetable seeds with my grandma and monitored the grow progress of whatever greenery we planted so taking all this into account you would be forgiven to think that I have green fingers, but alas it is not so! 

To my frustration no matter how much I try and plant vegetables or any other plants they never seem to reach their full potential, mind you, I'm growing them in large plant post, I think they call this urban gardening Ha!
The best example is my recent adventure into baby carrot growing. It all started so well. The seeds started to shoot on time, the growth was perfect, however I can't help thinking  my cat, Brick, trying to keep them warm somehow stunted their growth and after three months the harvest was rather disappointing.

I’ll keep trying with vegetables, might try my hand at radishes next, I heard that they are a lot easier

However, I do seem to have rather good fingers when it comes to orchids! They seem to be flourishing beautifully. 

They are truly the perfect plants for me as they require such low maintenance.

They all seem to be growing unusually well this year, but my white one has outdone herself completely! This orchid was given to me by Dave when we first started dating few years back and every year it flowers more and more, but this year she has flowered beyond expectations.

 

 Can't wait to see the flowers on this one, as it hasn't flowered for good few years. 

Really can't remember what colour it is.

Anna x

Love Crochet......indeed I do

I have had two fantastic tutorials with the amazing lovecrochet.com, they are on their blog and both are free.

Both of the tutorials are technical, the first one sheds some light on the most common yet baffling crochet terms and the second one takes you through step by step instructions on how to tapestry crochet, which is one of my most favourite crochet techniques. 

The most rewarding part of being a tutor is explaining and demonstrating techniques that are totally new to someone or have baffled them, the pleasure I get from seeing people understanding them is immeasurable.

When putting together written and picture tutorials, things get a bit harder as I’m not there in person physically demonstrating each technique. However, I tried to take each part step by step and explain everything in clearest way possible. I hope you agree and find both tutorials very useful and of course the best thing about written tutorial is you can go back to it over and over again.

So……the first tutorial is about demystifying crochet terms.

In your crochet life you will come across some terms that just leave you scratching your head. The most common ones are:

Turn

Turning chains and working into them

Chain spaces

This great picture tutorial explains every single term, what they mean, what to do with them and how to work into them.

I also decided to release my bunting pattern accompanied by the tutorial. Each of those crochet terms are used in the pattern so it’s a fantastic way to practice what you have learned while making a gorgeous bunting of course.

Those of you who came to my 'moving on from learn to crochet' workshop will recognise the bunting. I've designed the bunting with my wedding in mind, then I realised it's ideal for 'moving on from learn to crochet' workshop, as it just covers so many techniques and is perfect for understanding and practicing crochet pattern reading.

The pattern along with the tutorial is available exclusively at lovecrochet.com

The second tutorial is about tapestry crochet

Tapestry crochet is a technique for creating multi-coloured fabrics, very similar to Fair Isle in knitting, in fact this technique is very often referred to as Fair Isle crochet. The additional colour is carried along while you make your stitches, hidden on the inside of those stitches. The patterns for tapestry crochet are charted.

I’ve designed this super useful purse for this tutorial, it is perfect for carrying your small crochet projects around and a great way of practicing tapestry crochet.

In this tutorial I take you step by step through each part of tapestry crochet. Starting from understanding and working from crochet chart, to detailed explanation on how to create tapestry crochet, join and change colour.

To be taken to the relevant blog, just click on the links below:

Demystifying Crochet Terms

Tapestry Crochet 

Hope you enjoy both tutorial and find them useful. Don't forget to share your makes :)

Happy crocheting

Anna x