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 » July 9th, 2010 mio Tonight is TTC Knit-Along Eve (I wonder if it’ll be as hard to sleep tonight as it is on Christmas Eve…).
What is it? Well, you sign up, are assigned a group, your group rides the TTC (knitting all the while, or possibly crocheting since I’ll be there ^_-) to four yarn shops, and all of the groups meet up at the end to compare purchases and get prizes. At least, that’s the description I’ve been given; this is my first year participating!
I will, of course, be blogging after the fact, to let you know how it went and show you what I bought! In the mean time, you can watch my Twitter feed (or the box over there on the right side of this page) for updates! I’m going to try to take pictures and tell interesting tidbits of stories throughout the day. You don’t need to sign up for Twitter in order to follow me tomorrow, just go to http://twitter.com/fantasticmio and possibly refresh the page as the day progresses, and you shouldn’t miss a thing!
Things kick off at 11am (Eastern)!
Until then, check out the progress on my “Eventually Granny Square” blanket:
It just needs the border and then I’ll have an actual finished object to show off! This one is special in that I don’t know who it’s going to be for yet. Once I’m finished I’ll do up a pattern for those who want to try it at home. If you’re new-ish to crochet and are going to try this, I suggest you learn how to make a traditional Granny Square first. (I do 2ch in the corners, and no ch stitches anywhere else, but this pattern should work just fine with any pattern that has the Granny Square look to it… in fact, ANY square that has the “granny” border on it would work)
Anyhow, it’s not a hard pattern at all; the only part I had to figure out, really, was the valleys between the squares, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. ^_^
Posted in Afghans, Experimenting, Motifs Tags: afghan, blanket, crochet, granny square, knit-along, motif, TTC, yarn 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.
