Green crochet scarf and brooch

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Here is the scarf! It wasn’t difficult at all, actually. I remember thinking when I was a student that I would never ever have the patience to finish a large crochet project. It took me 7 years to finish a flower poncho, and now - what a progress! – the scarf took only a couple of weeks in total. It took several goes of undoing the stitches because of mistakes (making triangles or pentagons instead of squares, or starting a new row along the long side of the scarf instead of the short), but luckily I never had to undo more than one row.  When it was finished, I still dreaded spreading it out – what if there was a triangle lurking somewhere in the middle?

Since the scarf is quite dark, I thought it needed something to it. So I’ve also made a flower brooch in a lighter green shade. This Gluis Yarn is hand-spun by a local crafter (http://gluisyarn.weebly.com) and can be purchased in small skeins in a variety of colours. 

Inspiration: Irish lace

When visiting Ireland in summer, we stumbled upon a small museum of lace in Kenmare, “Kenmare Lace and Design Centre”. With me being a textile addict we, of course, had to go and check it out. Here is a souvenir set of cards: 

 
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The centre is very inspirational: not only it has a very impressive examples of antique lace, but also a selection of contemporary crafts as well as craft supplies for sale. After seeing that, I was itching to go back home and crochet something as intricate as possible. Here is what I’ve done.

There was a small green organza bag lying in my supply box and waiting to be used, so I decided to decorate it with crocheted flower (the same pattern as for the legwarmers) and make it into a lavender pouch. I used a plain green sewing thread and, just to add more history to it, a 100+ year old hook that I got from my grandmother. Now that must qualify as lace! The bag is available in my shop.

 

Crochet leg warmers

Hmm, it has been a long time since I've written here. Not really in line with my «9th of June Resolutions», but I don't give up. Especially that I have lots of projects to share, enough for several posts. 

Here are the leg warmers for my older daughter:

They are crocheted from 50% merino wool, 50% acrylic double knitting yarn, hook sizes 5 and 6. The instructions are modified from here.

Lower cuff:

Starting at lower edge with smaller hook, ch 30, join with sl st to form ring, ch 2, do not turn.

Row 1: Sc in each ch, join with sl st in top of ch-2, ch 2, do not turn.

Rows 2 through 8: Repeat Row 1.

Middle:

Row 9: With larger hook, ch 2, hdc in each sc across, join with sl st in top of ch-2, ch 2, turn.

Repeat Row 9 to length desired.

Upper cuff:

With smaller hook, repeat row 2 eight times. After last sl st, fasten off.

The flower was made using a beautifully illustrated tutorial here, with the only difference that I’ve made three layers of petals only. The brown yarn was leftovers bought from a charity shop, feels like pure wool. As it was rather thin, I used hook size 2.5.

Dear readers, could anyone recommend software for Mac, preferably free, to draw crochet patterns?