August 6th, 2010 
mio I’ve added a new, free pattern, well, more of a recipe, really, to make a blanket like this one:
You’ll find it under “Granny” at the top of this page, click here: http://fantasticmio.com/granny
I still haven’t figured out how to enable comments on the pattern pages, so feel free to leave them here instead. Especially let me know if you decide to try this pattern!
Posted in Afghans, Pattern 
Tags: afghan, blanket, crochet, granny square, Pattern, Tutorial 
No Comments » June 25th, 2010 mio You know you’ve been away from your blog a long time when the spammers start to notice! My spam filter for the comments found one that said something like, “Come back, please come back!” How nice! ^_^
I’ve been silent because of a combination of “working on presents for people who read the blog” and “working on getting a pattern published”.
I’ve been over-thinking about this for about a month now, and I’ve finally made a decision! I’m off work because of the G20 Summit being hosted in Toronto this weekend, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the pattern for the Oddly Linked Blanket.
If you’re on Ravelry, you’ll find the pattern here: Oddly Linked Blanket.
If you’re not on Ravelry, you should still be able to buy it by clicking on the button below to be taken directly to the PayPal page:
You would be paying $2.00 USD for the pattern for the blanket. I’d say it’s an easy-intermediate level blanket, with one tricky part that is clearly (I hope!) explained using both text and lots of pictures.
Once you get the hang of the special stitch, the blanket works up quickly! Use any smooth, solid coloured yarn with an appropriate hook for best results. I think a variegated yarn would work well, but one with long runs of colours would work best.
One last note: I know that this pattern looks like it might have a lot of ends to weave in, but it has exactly as many as you’d expect with that many colour changes; so 2 ends per stripe of colour.
May 19th, 2010 mio Here’s how to make the elusive bullion stitch!
First, with a hook appropriate to the yarn you’re using, make a chain about as long as your bullion stitch will be tall (I did 5)
Then grab a smaller hook (I used a 3.25mm) and put it along side your working hook, butt-to-hook.
Make sure the smaller hook goes through the loop on your working hook – this will make a later step MUCH easier!
Yarn over a whole bunch of times (I did 10 yo)
Insert your working hook into whatever stitch you’re working into (I inserted in the furthest ch from my hook). You may need to play with the yarn overs a bit to do this. Just be careful!
Yarn over
Pull through one loop
Yarn over
Pull through all loops on hook. I found it useful to very carefully pull through the first loop, then, making sure the smaller hook is butted right up against the tip of the working hook, hold onto the herd of yarn overs with your thumb and finger of your left hand, and pull the hooks through.
Take the smaller hook out
Yarn over (this will make a sort of vertical bar that ends up getting hidden behind the bullion stitch)
Pull through. Bullion stitch made!
Now do it again! And again! I did 7 more and then joined with a slip stitch to the top of the starting chain.
And here is the back; see the vertical bars?
Work around those vertical bars if you want to add more rounds that tuck behind the bullions, or work right into the tops of the bullion stitches.
Good luck!
