‘I’m Ba-ack!’
A little more of me chatting about crochet, yarn and designing.
Enjoy!
TRANSCRIPT:
So, I’m not sure who is the bigger glutton for punishment: Me for doing this again, or you for coming back to watch! But hey, welcome, thanks for coming back. You might notice the image quality is a little bit better today as we’re using a different camera. The poor old built-in camera on my laptop just didn’t cut it very well last time so I apologise for that.
0:37
So, we’ve upgraded our technology and, yeah, things are looking a little clearer. So hopefully that will make a little more enjoyable for you. So, yes, as I said, I’m Deanne from Addydae Designs, I am a crochet designer from Australia. I live in Canberra which is the capital, right at the moment we’re in the middle of winter here. It is very cold. We’ve been able to see snow from the house, which is great. On the Brindabella mountains, which is a mountain range to the west of Canberra and then that leads into the northern-most ski fields in Australia, so we get to see snow from the house here which is nice. So it has been cold as I said. The sunshine outside is a little deceiving. At the moment, it looks beautiful and warm and to step outside and then it’s a bit cold, so hence the hat today. So happy to be able to wear something warm even though I am inside. This is actually a new design of mine. Well, technically not a new design. It is a design that was commissioned by Bendigo Woollen Mills, which is a large mill down in Bendigo, Victoria. I designed a few patterns for Bendigo a while ago. They had exclusivity for the first 12 months and the rights to the pattern have now reverted back to me so I thought I’d make one.
2:01
It was really nice to just sit and follow along. It’s something that I hadn’t worked on for a while. It’s like a brand new pattern so yes this is it you might see how it’s worked up, there’s a little lace panels down the side just to make it a little bit more interesting but it’s lovely and cozy. My husband calls me a trolley lady when I wear hats like this. Yes, charming. He means it in the most affectionate way I’m sure.
2:28
I don’t care in this kind of weather! Especially when you go outside and especially when it’s windy. You definitely got to have a hat on to keep the noggin warm. This is my Breakers Hat, and you can also make a matching cowl or neck warmer to match this design as well. So there you go so that’s my latest thing off the hook I suppose you could say. I hope you like it.
2:55
What else can I tell you now that I’m back? I must have something to say! Well, a couple of other things are recently off the hook, because it has been so cold. I had to make something. I just want to make something really really chunky and soft and squishy. This doesn’t have a pattern, I made it up.
3:18
I strung together some, I think these were 16 ply yarns that I just happened to have in the stash.
3:24
This is for my daughter, by the way, hence the colours. I used a 10 millimetre hook and put this together. So as you can see is gorgeous and squishy and warm to wear when it’s really cold, so that was for Imogen, daughter number one and then of course because I made her one, I had to make Piper one as well. So this one’s a little bit smaller because I didn’t have as much yardage for this one. This is, this one I think is Poems, Poems Sock?? Oh, I can’t remember! I know it’s a Poems yarn, a slow colour changing yarn by Wisdom Yarns. Poems, something or other. But it’s beautiful and soft as well so that it’s perfect for Piper, because she likes oranges and purple so that was the one I made her.
4:22
It would be very simple. I may write the instructions up for you. If anyone would like that, please let me know. Very, very simple and makes this lovely cabled sort of ribbed look. It’s quite effective nice and squishy and soft. So yeah, there’s a couple of other things off the hook.
And the other most recent thing I finished, I think, was another request by Imogen. She wanted me to make a shawl for her, which of course is what every nine year old wants. So I got her to go through my patterns and pick out a design she liked and that’s what she did. And then she got to choose the colours from what I had in stash. So, being nine, hence, these colours. This is my Pende shawl – super duper easy and it makes a beautiful crescent shaped shawl that is really easy to wear. It would suit beginners, as well. These are the colours Imogen chose. You can see the design there. I hope that’s in focus. Yeah so lovely and easy. It’s designed for fingering weight so it’s nice and light, and you can wrap it sort of around and then even tie it close to the neck as well. At the front to keep the wind right out which is often what Imogen does.
It was funny the other night when we were going somewhere. She had hers on, she said, “Mum. Mum, are you going to wear a shawl too?” And at the time I hadn’t planned to. So I said no I don’t think I am tonight. So she said, “Oh, but then we won’t be shawl buddies.” So, yes, I had to go find a coordinating shawl so that we could be shawl buddies, and both have a shawl on, but I was quite grateful I have to admit later on because it was very cold and I was very happy to have it.
So they’re probably the most recent things off my hook. I’ve been working on a few new designs so I suppose I could share some designs in progress…. Does that make them DIPs? DIP WIPs? WIP DIPs? I don’t know, we’ll have a look anyway. We could start a new acronym! So here’s a DIP: a design in progress. Now if any of you’ve seen my patterns on Ravelry you probably will have seen this little kids vest I designed a few years ago called the Scooter Vest. This is just a little unisex vest I made up. Yeah, kid size. I think up to 10 years old I think
7:16
For ages and ages I’ve been wanting to make something similar, but with a hood.
7:22
So, yes, that’s the brainchild behind this design. So it’s not finished, obviously, because it’s in progress, hence all the ends. Now this gorgeous yarn is from Three Irish Girls. I think it’s called Everlasting Gobstopper, multicoloured
So you can see that just I’ve just cut out like a little square neckline. And then I’ve done a kangaroo pocket, which I just love and Piper loves that too. So there’s the pocket.
7:58
so I’ve just signed together the shoulder seams. And then of course, what will be here is the hood. And now I’m going to do the contrast in the purple around the sleeve edging as well.
8:10
And then, around the whole edge around the hood, which will come down into this ‘V’ and overlap, what’s not really a ‘V’, but they’ll overlap in this boxy sort of deep neckline there. So that’s the plan. Piper has decided to grow an awful lot since I started this. I only started in January. My plan was to have finished well and truly before the cold weather hits – I am running behind with this one. And once I seamed the shoulders the other day and I got her to try it on and she’s grown so much! I’m gonna have to get hooking very quickly on this one. Otherwise it’ll be too small for her by the finish.
8:53
So, yeah, I’m looking forward to having that completed. And of course, looking forward to being able to share the pattern with you soon.
With me just making my own patterns maybe makes me look a bit a little bit like a pattern snob. I don’t mean for that to be the case but I’ve got to admit that, because of the designing that I do, whenever I think of making something I always figure. Well, if I’m going to go to all that trouble of spending hours and hours and hours on a project, I might as well make one up myself and write up the instructions and get a design at the end of it. That’s not to say that I don’t like other people’s patterns,
9:32
I love so many crochet designs that are out there. I guess it’s just me thinking, well, I’ve only got a limited amount of time and if I’m going to do this designing thing, I might as well use the time that I’m making a project to come up with a design at the same time. But I have to admit, going back to making this one, after not working on it for over 12 months (it was probably 18 months ago I actually wrote this pattern now) it was really nice to just sit and follow something without having to, you know, be be thinking 10 steps ahead and scribbling things down and stuff like that. So yeah, I do make other people’s patterns. I do! But it’s not that often I have to say. So yes, I hope you don’t think I’m a pattern snob for that reason but it’s just, them’s the breaks when you’re a designer, I suppose. I can’t help it. The brain starts going and I start scribbling notes down and that’s what happens! So, yeah. All I do have another DIP, design-in-progress. Now I wish I could model these but this actually fit Imogen. I don’t know if you can see that, these are little fingerless gloves. So, I’m gonna call this stitch (because it’s done with the two colours) ‘briochet.’ Here’s another word! We’re making up acronyms and new words today!
So these are my Briochet Mitts. I don’t know what your Instagram thing looked like a little while ago but mine was absolutely flooded with the spectacular brioche knitting from a lot of Stephen West designs. I absolutely love his designs. They’re amazing. And the colours that people were using and it was just the most beautiful decoration to my Instagram feed. I really really enjoyed it and I was really really inspired by seeing all this beautiful brioche I thought wow, I wish you could do something similar in crochet….
11:40
So I had already made a little hat, called the ‘NInety Degrees,’ because on the outside the stripes go vertically but on the inside, you can flip it, it’s reversible, the stripes go the other way.
So this is the sample I made for my 90 degrees hat. So that’s one side, and then what you can do is you can open up the top. So, pop the pom poms in the other way. And if you want to flip it and have vertical lines (don’t look at the join, that was corrected in the later version) it’s got horizontal lines, hence that whole 90 degrees. 90 degree angle, yes. Okay, so this sort of already had that briochet stripe thing going with the two colours anyway, so I thought why don’t I can do that in some gloves?
12:41
So yeah, I had a bit of a play and this is what I came up with.
12:46
You can see the thumb shaping on them.
12:51
I was pretty happy with how it turned out and you can see on the inside. There you go. There’s the vertical, horizontal striping.
13:01
That happens on the inside when you do the stitches this way. So hopefully I will have this available shortly as well, making you few more modifications to the design and I’ll work up another sample, but hopefully that won’t be long, maybe in time for the Northern winter. I might not have that ready for the winter here. Unless I get myself really, really organised, but we’ll see. We’ll see. Hopefully I won’t keep you waiting.
So what else can I tell you about? I have had some rather nice stash enhancement of late.
13:40
I have been drooling, let’s, let’s be honest, I’ve been drooling over some of the beautiful yarns I’ve been seeing on other podcasts.
13:53
Lately, in particular the Grocery Girls podcast. Oh my goodness. Worst… or best I should probably say! Best yarn enablers ever! They get the most beautiful yarns. And so every time I sit when I’m watching them and do yourself a favour: If you have not watched the Grocery Girls podcast on YouTube, just get over there and watch it now. They are two sisters that from Canada, highly entertaining to watch. Most of its knitting but the occasional bit of crochet does pop up on this show. But highly entertaining and, yes, back to the yarn. The yarn they get is amazing. And so, usually when I’m watching I’ll have my iPad with me and I’ll be looking up Etsy stores or all the stores that they talking about the indie dyers, the same time, but unfortunately for, well, being in Australia, with the Aussie dollar, not that flash and then shipping costs from Canada and from the
States can be quite high. Sometimes it makes it a little bit expensive let’s say to order, you know, just one or two skeins of yarn from some of these Indie dyers, because it’s hard to get more than that on all the yarn updates they have. So, I can only drool from afar, at the moment. But it got me looking more on Etsy for local indie dyers, and I have to say with all my searching, goodness knows why I didn’t do it more prior to this, but I’ve come across some fabulous indie dyers here in Australia. So, if you are also in Australia, and would like to get your hands on some awesome hand dyed, I have a great recommendation for you.
I got the most gorgeous package today. Sorry, the crinkling is going to be noisy. But I had to show you – it was packaged up so beautifully. This is yarng from Circus Tonic Handmade. Such beautiful colours and she packages it up so lovely. Look at this little card, and little tea bag, which I might try after I’ve stopped chatting to you. Anyway, I managed to snavel a few of her beautiful skeins. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with these yet but hey, they were nice to be able to grab.
So this one is Grey Hawk, a lovely soft grey. Really, really soft and, I mean, the yarn is deliciously soft as well. There’s some beautiful grey tonal in that. And then, so that was a Grey Hawk. All of her… I’m pretty sure all her yarns are named after birds
16:40
I’ll have to ask her one day what the deal is with the birds.
This one’s Barn Owl. It’s got some beautiful browns and some black speckles in there.
16:55
I’ve got a lovely chocolate one from Malabrigo a while ago that I probably mentioned in my last podcast. And I’m gonna team it with that.
And then this one, I just love this! This is Turquoise Parrot. Now how cool is this? Now, that is a stash enhancement, alright! I really don’t know what I’m going to do with that. It’s showing up quite red there but it’s really a fuchsia colour, but still you can see the gorgeous speckles
17:30
I love speckles at the moment! Speckles are so hot right now. Isn’t that the hashtag? There’s some gorgeous yarns out there at the moment so I was so wrapped to be able to grab these from a local yarn dyer here in Australia. She’s based in Sydney, so I ordered them Friday – she usually has an Etsy update over Friday. And I had them delivered on Monday, here in Canberra so that was pretty cool. No waiting, which is great for an impatient person like me. It was really good. I’ve got a couple of others on a previous update and I’ve already wound them. This one is called Magpie Lark.
Let’s get my head out of the way and… There we go. Okay that’s Magpie Lark. It’s a really gentle, gently speckled yarn, just with a little bit of black on a lovely soft white neutral base, and then this one, which is this one I used in the mitts, actually, that’s the lighter colour in the mitts, and this is. I can’t remember the name… Zebra Finch. So that’s what’s left of it anyway. It is such a gorgeous colour. So I highly recommend Hannah’s yarns and Hannah, if you stumble across this video blog: Hi, thank you for the gorgeousness! So, yes, do yourself a favour – look up Circus Tonic Handmade on Etsy. If you want to get your hands on some lovely hand dyed yarn here in Australia. So that’s my stash enhancement. Recently, I’m trying to put myself on a bit of a yarn ban for all of, like, three and a half weeks, I think I’ll make it. Because I am going to the Bendigo Wool and Sheep Show. Yes, I know. I’m pretty excited I have to say. I’ve been just freaking out with excitement once we decided to go which was only a couple of weeks ago. We worked it out, we coordinated our diaries, my husband and I worked out that yes, we could go down.
Since moving to Canberra, because, okay, Bendigo is six hours from here, Bendigo sheep show has been going for like I think it’s in 139 years. It’s this massive annual event held in Bendigo and of course there are sheep, and it’s like a big country show. I’ve never been so I can’t speak from experience but just from looking at the program for the event they have awards, you know, fleece grading and things like that but there’s sheep do trials and fashion shows. Obviously, lots of indie dyers and designers and sellers and makers. Anything, pretty much anything wool related, I think. So I’m going to check it out when we go down in almost three weeks time. That’s when it’s on. So I’m very excited so yes, no yarn in between now and then because I’m sure there will be plenty to tempt me once I get down there, so I’m pretty excited about going down there for that.
And I know a lot of people that I have only ever met online, will be there and I’m really looking forward to meeting quite a few people in person. I know Jen from Candy Apple Lane will be there. We’ll will finally get to meet each other in person. Jen and I have worked together on… actually, on this design. That’s the Doppler Shawl. I designed that for Jen’s yarns: Candy Apple Lane another indie dyer from Australia. So yeah, looking forward to meeting you again, if you’re watching and stumble across here. So that’ll be good. And, yeah, I know I’ve come across a few that I’m excited to, to meet down there but I can’t remember them right now. I’m gonna have to write them down because I’ll kick myself if I go all that way and then forget who to look for.
22:05
I just might have to smuggle some of yarn home. Now, my husband’s coming. He’s very sympathetic. Now I should have said understanding definitely of my passion for all things yarn. And it was his idea to decide only four weeks out that we would go, so it’ll be good fun. I’m looking forward to it.
22:30
So I’m not sure what else I can tell you without just rambling aimlessly here, which I don’t want to do because I want to keep the content interesting for you.
22:41
My girls have been very good, they are actually in the next room playing very quietly. So, I can’t make them wait for too much longer.
22:51
But yeah, I hope whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, you’re having some good time with your yarn and hook or needles or whatever takes your fancy. And hopefully I will see you again we’ll meet again. All right, thanks for listening, and as I said, we’ll see you again, I’m starting to ramble now. See what happens!
23:20
If you want to find more from me I’m Addydae_Designs on Instagram. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me on Ravelry as MrsRamjet. Okay, now that’s going to be another story! Yes Mrs Ramjet, as in: Roger’s wife.
23:43
No my husband’s name is not Roger, it’s Darren. But when he was younger, he had quite auburn hair, and with the surname Ramsay, one of our friends just nicknamed him Roger. Roger. Ramjet, Roger Ramsay. Darren had the reddish hair, and it just kind of stuck so of course I’m going to be Mrs Ramjet. So there you go, I’m Mrs Ramjet on Ravelry.
24:11
And that’s where you can find me so hey if you want to say hi I’ve got a bunch of other designs on Ravelry as well. Addydae Designs – I explained in my previous video blog where that name came from so if you’re watching for the first time on this episode….Should I call them episodes? I don’t know.
24:33
I feel like if I call them episodes, you’ll be disappointed if I’m not putting one out, you know, like every Wednesday or every fortnight or something regularly. So maybe it’s more like a video blog or blog. So, a video blog.
24:47
And if you haven’t watched the first one, have a look at that. That explains where the Addydae Designs comes from. So again, thanks for watching and hopefully I may hear from some of you, I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’d like to see something from me, a design, perhaps, or a preference for which design I finish first. Please let me know because sometimes I never know what people are waiting for, perhaps, and I don’t want to keep you waiting too long.
25:21
So thanks again, and we’ll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
