scarf Archives - Lucias Figtree

The Coorie shawl, Tinna and I…..

Lucia & Francesca / March 30, 2020November 5, 2020 / Lifestyle, Patterns, Stories

Hi Everyone,

Well two posts in the space of a few days.. things are indeed changing…

I normally stay clear from talking about myself or my life and I focus on general topics or a crochet project, mainly because I do not think my life is so eventful to be worth it sharing but I am going to make an exception with this post.

I still find quite surreal what is going on around me at the moment but I guess I am not alone in my bewilderment.

By last Thursday the adrenaline that fuelled me over the mad rush to try to sort out as much as possible before the lock down dwindled to fumes, and I suddenly got hit by the enormity of the situation not only for me and my family but for the entire human race. That subsequently morphed into an overwhelming anxiety based on tsunami of “what if…” dreadful scenarios.

I was so engulfed by the all thing that I couldn’t even pick up my hook and work on something.

I just went to my bed…

then, as I couldn’t sleep, I picked up my phone, which normally I NEVER do, as all Electronic devices are banned , in purpose,from my bedroom, but in these past few weeks I made an exception and kept it by my bedside just in case I end up missing a call from my parents or my brother in Italy…

Any way, I am scrolling down my messages and I see one from Tinna .

I post a screen-shot for you…

So I downloaded the pdf expecting the new pattern we had chatted about while she was here instead there is something new: the Coorie shawl…

and I am like awww a Scottish inspired pattern, so nice of her…

then I read the introduction and I started to cry…

What can I say?

Serendipity…things happen to you when you most need them!

I am posting the introduction here, but, please ,forgive me if it might seems a bit self indulgent.

I assure you that it is not the reason why I am posting it at all.

I am sharing it with you because those lines encompass all what I love about crochet!

Crochet is about feeling good ,enjoying the craft, it is about friendship,gifting, sharing, exchanging. Crochet is about hard work behind the scenes, it is about an overwhelming addiction to yarn, but what Crochet is for me is people!!

Please do not get me wrong, it is not all pretty rainbows and fluffy clouds,

more you share more you put yourself out there .

Bigger is your presence on line bigger isyour exposure to all sort, and you do encounter some unpleasant people which take vantage of you and your craft, but, thank goodness, there aren’t so many of them and the overall experience is so worth the effort, the sleepless nights, because the pattern is not right, the frustration with technology, the worries, the lack of time and more so the going back and start again…

The magical bit happens when, in your journey, you stumble in someone very special indeed.. and you find out that besides crochet you got loads of other things in common!

So when I picked up Tinna at the airport that Tuesday it felt like I was picking up a old friend,I opened my home to her and she fitted in like a glove as simple as that and if wasn’t for the crochet I will never have met her!

So yesterday I set aside what I was working on, pull out the lovely Icelandic Plötulopi yarn Tinna brought me and I am making my Coorie, with this lovely surprising light unspun yarn it will remind me of the lovely time we had together and I cannot wait for the next time we will see each other again.

As the real magic in life is just human kindness.

So all the best to you all out there, stay safe

Peace and love,

also last but not least, if you want to make your COORIE too you can find Tinna’s pattern here:

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/coorie-3

LUCIA XXX.

October…October…it is over.

Lucia & Francesca / November 1, 2017November 5, 2020 / Lifestyle, Stories, Travel

October has been one amazing month…I cannot believe it is already gone!!

I feel my feet have not touched the ground, I have been running around even more than the usual.

I went to Italy just for a couple of days at the beginning of the month because was my dad’s 84th birthday, then back home for a few days, some final touches on the new blanket ,the Fiesta, which I made for October, as an alternative kit to offer with the Eastern Jewels at the Knitting &Stitching show at the Alexandra Palace in London,

also, I made,re-made, and made again my entry for the blog tour2017..but you probably have already read the all saga in my last blog.

Now that the BLOG TOUR2017 is finished I can say it was amazing! so many projects and so much variety !!

I am so pleased you loved my Spanish moss scarf! there were so many downloads of the pattern that it crashed my blog!

I love the scarf too, I have already used a few times, hopefully, you will enjoy yours too.

So two projects for October: here they are together the FIESTA and the SPANISH MOSS SCARF.

and few more pictures from AllyPally:

a nice collage Sophie did ( I was too busy chatting and took virtually no pictures!) as few friends came and visit us on the stand, so you got Phil from https://thetwistedyarn.com/ and Sarah, https://annabooshouse.blogspot.co.uk/and Emma, http://emmavarnam.co.uk/

London was amazing, the Stylecraft team made me so welcome, I had a fabulous time, I loved every minute of it.

It was also quite ” dreamlike “too as I am not used to the attention, the compliments and general extraordinary kindness.

Been a crocheter and a blogger can be quite a solitary pursuit, You sit at home with your yarn and your laptop and you just ..crochet, write, frog, read comments, answer emails, mix more colours, make swatches…more frogging…drink endless cup of teas…it is a marvellous thing but it is also a bit of an obsession too….

I grab EVERY second I got free to do yarny things, yarn follows me everywhere it is in my handbag, it is in my drawers in the office, it is ALL OVER my craft room, I have some in the car..( just in case there is a traffic jam …) I carry some in my pockets too, my children tell their friends that, in our house, you can spot the odd skein or two in the fridge too…I always attempt to denial but, if I am entirely honest, I have to admit that “maybe” a lonely ball of mohair has occasionally made her way in the vegetable drawer..as I read somewhere that to avoid the fine hair to catch on your hook you should stick the ball in the fridge..( I have to say I m not so sure it works after all! Mohair is, cold or room temperature, still a bismal to work with a hook!!)

So back to Ally Pally…what can I say?? AMAZING ! thank you, SOO MUCH for coming to see me, and for being so kind! I loved talking to everyone that came to the stand, some chats were technical questions about the blanket, some were just general yarny chit-chat, it was great fun. I also had the privilege to meet in person some of you that have been following my blog and my facebook since day one!

So besides the huge feel-good-factor of being able to meet some of you crocheters out there, there was another bonus, as being at a show gives me an opportunity to understand better what you like, what you are interested in, how you choose a project and why.

So I came back with a lot of new ideas of what to make next, how to improve the page and the patterns and also I came back with a little present too…

In the past few months, I have been chatting online with a lovely lady called Joy which owns a shop in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, the shop is called Wool &More https://showme.co.za/plett/lifestyle/woolmore/and they are stocklists for Stylecraft but they also have a lot of amazing local yarns.

Joy was in London visiting her new grandchild and also she came to see us at Ally Pally, she was so kind and brought me a selection of beautiful South Africans yarns! I loved reading the story behind these amazing mostly artisan-like fibres, I could appreciate the passion and skill required to produce the yarn and it makes using the skeins even more special. without people like Joy and her team, it would be really difficult for these yarns to reach the end consumers so

support your local shop wherever you live and WELL DONE Wool&More!

look a beautiful array of south African yarns!

and here a picture of Joy ‘s friend Nicki and myself and in the background the VERY busy Stylecraft stand!.

I did make another scarf too , and loads of samples for the months to come, some will see the light and some others will go back at the bottom of the basket.

oh i nearly forgot…I made a bag too!!

so November here I come!

stay tuned and remember…..

lucia xx

BLOGTOUR TIME !!! the “Spanish moss scarf”

Lucia & Francesca / October 21, 2017November 5, 2020 / Lifestyle, Patterns, Stories

Gosh! my first blog tour…..!!!

What can I say? it is very exciting and a bit scary too. It feels quite daunting to have to add my small contribution to this amazing array of fabulous projects made by my friends and fellow blogstars. Yesterday was the turn of https://annabooshouse.blogspot.co.uk/ : Sarah made the most amazing knitted shawl I thought was beautiful, I used to knit all the time, then crochet took over, but that shawl is really tempting!…

Anyway back to today project, I gave it a go and I hope you will like my scarf it is called “Spanish Moss”.

I got one of my daughters, Valentina, to model it ,so you can see it on an actual person and not on the floor or a table.

As you know, back in July, at the Blogstars meeting, we all got the opportunity to pick one of the packs of BATIK and BATIK ELEMENTS to make something with.

The packs are 500 grams and contain 10 balls of Batik :

the main colour is Krypton, then there is Indigo, Sage, Storm, Silver, Teal and Lupin

The colours are fabulous, it is a great yarn to work with, one of my overall favourites, I have to say, in fact, as you know, I have used Batik a lot in the past months, not only alone but in combination also with other yarns like Cotton Classique and Special DK.

So do you want to know how the scarf came about?

As I like to share with you the creative process I also have to say that has not been the smoothest of all experiences.

Nothing to do with the yarn which I LOVE but all to do with ME!!

I do panic when I get told that I have a limited amount of yarn to use and also when I get told what colours to use…500 grams in the big scheme of blankets production is a minuscule quantity , I use at least the double, sometimes even 3 times the quantity so after few failed attempts to conjure a blanket of some sort I had to give up and make something else..so..here as a testimony how creating a pattern out of the blue is not that simple (for me at least )… a small selection of loads of debris…!!

Back to inspirations…during the summer I went to visit a couple of places that are very dear to me, one is the Bomarzo’s Gardens, near Viterbo in central Italy.

A strange and fascinating garden build by Pier Francesco Orsini in the 16th century, full of bizarre and fascinating sculptures , statues covered in moss , strange crooked buildings and a huge monster mouth (known as “the mouth of hell”), inside which, on the tongue, stands a picnic table where you can have lunch.

Why do I like it?

I don’t know ,probably because it is something halfway between a dream and a nightmare… I always loved places that are unsettling like the steps of the Franciscan Monastery of La Verna, in Tuscany or

or indeed something that you might be more familiar with: the beautiful Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall.

On the unsettling theme, one of the places that I haven’t visited but do fascinate me are the Swamps of the Southern States of America like Great Dismal.

Somehow the changing colours of the Batik Krypton reminded me of the variegated colour of the moss, the one I am familiar with, in Bomarzo, La Verna and Heligan and the so called “Spanish moss” that I have just seen in documentaries hanging down from some ancient cypress trees in the Lousiana’s bayou.

I have seen some speciments of Spanish Moss “live” in Botanical gardens too:

the picture of the Spanish moss is from the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh.

So there is how the Spanish moss is scarf came about…

I wrote the pattern for you to try if you like.

The scarf has a main body made of ‘trellis’ using Krypton,

then some 3D strange flowers, which I made using some of the other colours available in the pack, plus some “dangling bits” my attempt to imitate the Spanish moss.

I used most of the Krypton available in the pack and a bit of the other colours. I was tempted to make flowers all around the edge of the scarf but I estimated that I wouldn’t be able to manage to do so with the quantities in the pack so instead than having a few sparse lonely flowers hanging about on the longer sides edge I opted for 8 flowers huddled up together at the two extremities of the scarf.

Also a note about the pattern…I tried my best, it is most likely the most complex pattern I have written so far and I am still learning so, fingers crossed, I hope it is comprehensible enough for all of you to try, I added some pictures that I hope will help when my pattern writing it is a bit puzzling…

CLICK THIS LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE PATTERN: Spanish Moss Scarf- luciasfigtree

Stylecraft is doing a competition today where if you enter you got a chance to win a pack like the one I have used.. so give it a go! this is the link to the competition:

https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28570cc5126/?.

I am sure you can use for any of the amazing projects that the rest of the Blogstars have made so far and in the next few days!

The great thing is that, by the time the Blog tour is over, you will have 16 different projects to choose from!! and you will find for sure one that appeals to you!

And, the last thing, DO NOT MISS tomorrow Blogtour’s entry from Zelna from http://zootyowlcards.blogspot.co.uk/. she is amazingly talented and I can’t wait to see what she has come up with…

love you all,

happy crocheting,

Lucia xx