Gifted coasters

Part of the enjoyment I get out of crafting for gifts is the wrapping and sending. 

I recently crocheted these coasters for a friend as a thank-you gift and enjoyed packaging them up and labelling them almost as much as I enjoyed the crafting!

You'd think it would be a simple matter to find a good pattern for a circular, basic crocheted coaster - in fact it was anything but! I had to try quite a few iterations - I had selected some yarn from my stash (Rowan Cotton Tape in a nice rich navy colour) and it was not easy to find a pattern that suited it fully.

After a few false starts, I managed to find this lovely simple pattern - took me about 15 minutes to make each coaster, so it was nice and quick, as well as being very simple to remember.

The coasters are now hopefully keeping my friend's furniture free of coffee cup rings.

Oddments

What, two posts in a row about needle crafts? Must be that time of year.

Like, I suspect, all sock knitters, I have a huge bag of leftover sock yarn. It's full of oddments of many colours, patterns and fibres, being saved for Something Special, aside from the possibility that I may one day darn those very socks.

It seems Something Special has now arrived, in the form of a crochet blanket project (or perhaps a cushion cover, or even a table mat, depending on how quickly I get bored).

I wanted to make hexagons rather than granny squares, to make the blanket look more like a patchwork quilt than a potentially rather frumpy throw. So I'm using the Royal Sisters Grandma Star Hexagon pattern, but with each hexagon made of just one colour yarn rather than two.

Once you get the hang of the pattern it's pretty simple, and on my new year trip to see my folks I spent a couple of hours each way on the train crocheting up a load of these. Well it felt like a load, in reality probably not even a cushion cover yet...!

I'm going to block them and finish the ends as I go along - hell it's going to be tedious enough stitching them together without leaving a whole load of finishing to do first.

Don't expect to see the finished blanket any time soon, this is quite definitely a 'heritage' project, but at least it will give me something to do on public transport now my hoodie is too large to carry.

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