Month: November 2024

My Winter’s Love blanket – A quick Update

About a fortnight ago I showed you my current test project: Winter’s Love Cal. A new overlay mosaic pattern by Ana Morais Soares from One Skein of Love.
At that time, I had just finished about 2/3 of the blanket.

In case you missed my previous post you can read about it here

In the meantime the Cal started. Ana just released part 2 of the pattern. And yes, I am almost finished with my blanket!
All tails are knotted and cut! All slip stitches to start the border are done! And last night I started with the back layer of the border.

When I started my blanket a few weeks ago, I decided to replace Ana’s beautiful green (C1) with Off White and the cream (C2) with Claret Red. So I had a dark background and white motifs.

I really love the way how this turned out!

However, when I reached pattern 9, I had some doubts about my colour placement.

Due to my colour scheme the trees in pattern 9 were shown in white. In my opinion this didn’t go so well with the white baubles in pattern 8. I had already finished half of the pattern when I decided that it would be better to swap colours. That meant I had to go back some rows! I kept row 1 (Off White) and row 2 (Claret Red) in my old colour scheme. Then skipped row 3 of the pattern. It is a plain row of single crochet, so it did not influence the pattern. But this made it possible to continue in row 4 with Off White instead of Claret Red – and voilà, the colours had changed!

Changing the colour also had the advantage of giving the last pattern a dark background again. I liked that better as well.

Please note: If you decide to do the same for your blanket, you will have 1 row less in the number of rows. This also means that you will have 1 stitch less on the long sides when you crochet the slip stitches and the border.

Unless you do it like me. After I finished the last pattern, I added a row of single crochet in Off White. This way I started and finished the blanket with the same colour. But to be honest, it wasn’t the look that convinced me to do it. It was simply the fact that my slip stitches then had a contrasting background on both short sides. My eyes couldn’t have coped with anything else.

And here is my colour placement in detail

And a word about the yarn amounts:

So far I have used 4 balls of Off White and also 4 balls of Claret Red. There is nothing left from these balls. So with a different tension you might run short with these amounts.

Yarn is Yarnsmiths Create DK from Wool Warehouse in the UK. I worked with a 4 mm hook.

That’s all for today! I’m off to do a bit of Christmas decorating. And continue working on the border! Have a lovely time 💕

Winter’s Love CAL

Now it’s that very special time of the year again! In the northern hemisphere, winter is lurking just around the corner. Christmas is just over 5 weeks away. And Ana from One Skein of Love has just introduced her new Winter CAL (crochet along): Winter’s Love!

Winter’s Love is another blanket design in Overlay Mosaic. It matches her earlier winter designs – Winter Wonderland, Wintry Forest and Magic Winter – perfectly.

Picture by Ana Morais Soares / One Skein of Love

Lovely, isn’t it?

Winter’s Love CAL Dates

The Winter’s Love Cal will start on Friday, 22. November 2024.

It is divided into four parts.
Part 1 will be released on Friday, 22. November 2024. Parts 2 – 4 follow at intervals of one week each. So the dates are

  • Part 1 – 22. November 2024
  • Part 2 – 29. November 2024
  • Part 3 – 06. December 2024
  • Part 4 – 13. December 2024

All information about the CAL is already available on Ravelry. After you purchased the pattern you can download an introduction file with all relevant notes. Yarn amounts, size and gauge, pattern notes, abbreviations, tutorials and so on.

My version of Winter’s Love

I promised Ana in October that I would test the pattern. I’m sorry to say that I am not finished yet. Life and, unfortunately, my health got in the way a bit.

Luckily I’ve already done a good bit that I can show. And of course I’m hurrying to finish as quickly as possible.

My yarn

This time I am trying something different: Yarnsmiths Create DK.

Yarnsmiths is a relatively new yarn and an own brand from Wool Warehouse. (My favorite online yarn shop. Unfortunately located in Great Britain.)

Create DK is a 100 % Acrylic yarn. At the moment it comes in 120 different shades. I guess many of them are similar to the colours from Stylecraft Special DK. But there are also some special ones. It’s definitely worth a look!
The yardage is 290 m per 100 g ball. Recommended hook size is 4 mm.

It works up nicely! I like it and will definitely try some more colours.

My colours and colour placement

When I saw Ana’s new design for the first time I instantly thought of classic colours.
So I had originally planned to use white, red and grey to give it kind of a Nordic look.
I ordered some Off-White, Claret Red ans Storm Grey. I primarily wanted to use the off-white as a background colour and make the motifs in red. A little grey in between.

After my yarn arrived, I initially followed Ana’s pattern just replacing her cream coloured yarn with Off-White.

After the first few rows, however, I changed my mind. The claret-red fascinated me and I considered swapping the colours. 

The picture below shows both versions. The sample on top is my first one, using Off-White as background. The other one (with the little blue stitch marker) is the one with swapped colours.

What shall I say? I didn’t have to think for long! The one with the swapped colours was my favourite and became my final version. Without the grey though.
Throughout the pattern I use Off White as colour C1 and Claret Red as colour C2.

My progress so far

This is what I have so far. I just reached the end of part 2. 150 rows are done.

Now on to part 3. Another 75 rows to go.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress

And just a side note on my yarn order:

Yep, after years of abstinence, I finally dared to order from Wool Warehouse in the UK again. I hadn’t ordered there since the Brexit (the UK’s exit from the European Economic Union).
I knew that I would have to pay extra taxes. Ok, but unfortunately, I had read a lot about people from Europe who had to pay horrendous amounts. So I really wasn’t sure how everything would work.
I am happy that I finally tried it! It is nothing to be scared of!

My order was delivered by DHL. The parcel was not tracked. That was a bit of a pity because you never know when you can expect delivery. But it arrived within a week or so. I got a note from DHL and had to pick the parcel up in the post office. There I paid the import sales tax. This corresponds to the usual 19% VAT here. And I also had to pay a small handling fee to DHL. But in total the price was still reasonable.

The only thing I have to make sure of is that my order does not exceed € 150. Then there are no customs duties and I only have to pay the import VAT. I really wish I had tried it earlier!

Mystified Square

Last updated on May 12, 2026

I’m happy to finally be able to show you my version of the Mystified Square.
It is the new design from Pam Knighton-Haener / A Yarn of Serendipity. The pattern has just been published. AND: it has been chosen by the Ravelry BAMCAL group as their block of the month for November.

Ravelry BAMCAL

Do you know the BAMCAL on Ravelry?
BAMCAL stands for Block-A–Month Crochet-A–Long. This crochet-along is organised every year by a group on Ravelry.

The CAL runs throughout the year. Three different Afghan squares are featured each month. Two of these, measuring 6 and 12 inches respectively, are chosen by the moderators. A third square is chosen by the group members in a poll.

All patterns are free – at least for the month they are chosen. You can decide to make one or all of the squares – it’s up to you. At the end of the year, you can combine all your squares into a blanket. Alternatively, you can make anything else you can think of.

I absolutely love this idea! Maybe I should join in next year?

Mystified Square – The Pattern

The Mystified Square is designed for Aran / worsted weight yarn (#4). But it will also work very well with other yarn weights. Of course, using a different yarn weight will affect the final size.

With worsted weight yarn, the finished square will be 11 or 12 inches (28 or 30,5 cm). This depends on whether a 4.5 or 5 mm crochet hook is used.

The pattern is classified as mid-intermediate. It uses various stitches, including some special ones. But no worries, they are all very well explained. And a picture tutorial helps with each round.

The design comes in two colourways, each with 5 different colours. Of course, you can also create your own colour scheme. I bet the Mystified Square would also look great in just one colour!

The pattern is available on Ravelry. You will find a link at the end of this post..

My Test Version

I already tested this pattern for Pam some weeks, or rather months, ago. I think it was in early August.
Of course, everything had to be kept secret until the pattern was finally published. Hard time :-)

As always, I did not use the suggested Aran yarn. I still don’t like working with it and feel a bit uncomfortable using a 5 mm hook. So, this time I decided to use up some Hobbii Rainbow Cotton 8/6 (a #3 yarn) from my stash.

I followed colourway 2, but replaced the colours as follows

  • Hobbi Rainbow Cotton 8/6 (50 g / 105 m)
    • A – 065, Apricot (discontinued?)
    • B – 73, Pearl Gray
    • C – 047, Dark Old Rose
    • D – 049, Peach (discontinued?)
    • E – 012, Volcano Gray

Unfortunately it looks like two of my colours are already discontinued. At least I couldn’t find them in the actual Hobbii shop.

I like the way the colours come together. I just realised that they’re a bit tricky to capture in photos. The Dark Old Rose in particular is a little reluctant to show its true beauty…

Using a 3,75 mm hook my square turned out to be about 25 cm / 10 inch.

I really enjoyed working on this pattern and am happy with the result!

Pattern Link

Mystified Square on Ravelry

Are you going to try the pattern? If so, have fun 💕