And today, get inspired by some of the gorgeous cardigans people have made from my Big Bow Cardigan Pattern, now available in a collection of Ten Crochet Sweater Patterns for Women over at Interweave’s:

Ravelry ID: kginger
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Ravelry ID: skydramini
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Ravelry ID: Trex
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See also her Crochet Me Blogpost about it.

Ravelry ID: lsantanadiaz
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Ravelry ID: ajeffrey
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I was pleasantly surprised when I got a letter stating that both the Big Bow Cardigan and the Northern Dreams Pullover were “top-selling” crochet patterns at the Interweave Store. Who knew?

You can now get an e-book called Best of 2010: Top Ten Crochet Sweater Patterns for Women at the Interweave Online Store. The Big Bow Cardigan and the Northern Dreams Sweater are included in this collection..

To inspire you to work up one of those two designs I want to show you a couple of pictures of what others have made of them. Let’s start with the Northern Dreams Pullover and keep the Big Bow Cardigan for another post. Thanks to everyone who let me use their picture.

Ravelry ID: Freckle
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Ravelry ID: Rufarocrafty
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Ravelry ID: lazada
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Ravelry ID: StaciaZ
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Ravelry ID: LeahB
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Ravelry ID: pixienyc
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This was actually my travel project when I went to Seattle, but I am just getting round to posting about it. It sat there waiting for some kind of closure solution for weeks now.

It’s the Anna Cardigan by Robyn Chachula, available in her upcoming book “Baby Blueprint Crochet”, it is also available for free in a collection of 6 baby patterns on the Crochet Me website.
I did not swatch for this (I always do for adult garments though), but with a baby pattern I sometimes like to go the “if it doesn’t fit now, it will later”-route. I followed the instructions for the 12 month size and it turned out rather bigger (well, it’ll fit her later, right?). It will actually be quite some time later because, look, big 3 ½ year old sister will wear it in the meantime.
Please forgive the “styling” of the photo shoot. It would surely look much better with a blouse underneath, but it really was too hot for fiddling with layers, so I just put it on her for a minute and took a couple of pics.

I used 3 skeins of Rowan RYC Cashsoft 4 Ply. Ravelry project page is here.

Depuis le temps que j’ai voulu faire ça! Enfin, enfin, un de mes patrons est disponible en Français dans la boutique d’Annette Petavy. C’est elle qui s’est chargée de la traduction (car si ça aurait été moi, vous auriez encore attendu un bon moment).
Voici le lien pour acheter le patron en Français : Phoenix – mitaines.
Pour celles qui préfèrent la version Anglaise, rien ne change, c’est toujours ici sur mon site ou sur Ravelry.

Finally one of my patterns is available in French, thanks to Annette Petavy who’s offering the translation in her shop. As for the English version, nothing changes, it’s still available here on my site or through Ravelry.

Well, well, I’ve been thinking about opening a different blog for my sewing adventures, because I felt (still kind of feel) that the trials and tribulations of a sewing beginner have nothing to do with the crochet designer people are probably looking for when searching for my blog.

Sewing blogs are so different, at least the ones I read at the moment (mostly French ones). They are way more playful and “hip” and they even seem to have a certain coded language (which annoys the heck out of me because I hate badly written French from people who know better, but do it because it’s kind of “cool”). And wow, do they get comments. It’s a bit like knitting blogs a few years back, you know, pre-Ravelry.

Anyway, in the end, I decided against a second blog. But I will try and keep the focus on crochet and knitting here. I will still show some sewing, but maybe not every little thing.
If you want to follow ALL my sewing, there’s always the Flickr Set.

I am still not really back to designing, but at least the crochet hooks are out again. What you see above was actually inspired by a fabric I’ve been sewing with and will serve to embellish some of it.

I’ll be back very soon; I know it’s been long. A sneak peak of what I am working on at the moment:

I wish I had time to blog, but….. I don’t. So, without any explication, look at what I’ve finished recently:

C’est peut-être ce qu’il me fallait, un petit passage au Café Crochet de Paris hier. En tout cas, aujourd’hui je me suis enfin replongé dans mon gilet en cours auquel manquait que l’empiècement au crochet. J’y suis presque…

Almost done with my black cardigan, it sat there waiting for me to work the crocheted yoke for a while. After attending the Café Crochet in Paris yesterday, I finally managed to summon up enough motivation to do it. Almost there…

Just a little reminder that (in case you missed it) tomorrow is the last day of voting for the Flamies. Here’s the blog post that leads you to the survey. I am nominated in the Best Designer Women’s Fashion Category for the Samira Sweater. I think I saw my name in another category, no? But I don’t remember where now and I can’t go back to the survey because I voted already.

I am changing plans and projects all the time at the moment. That’s just the way it is until I find my crafty rhythm again.
So, I did decide to ditch the Year in Pictures thing on Flickr, too many photos for me. I also ditched the first design challenge on the Project Yarnway group. I don’t have enough time to do something good, so why stress about it?
But, as it turns out, with the Olymics going on and all, one does watch a lot more television than usual (which is not difficult because usually it’s like none, except DVDs) and I need my hands to be occupied. So I am participating after all in the Ravelympics. I started Serena, a knit and crocheted cardigan from an earlier Yarn Forward Magazine. The knit part is perfect mindless knitting (perfect for when you actually want to WATCH). The crocheted yoke will need a little more attention (I’ll just do that during something boring).
By the way, what are your favourite winter sports to watch? I prefer everything that’s outside where I can see a bit of scenery, mountains and snow. I don’t like the ones taking place inside much.