a happy thrifting report, and some crochet success!

Our move to Sydney has been, well, mixed. I miss sunny Brunswick with all of its stimulation, beautiful friends, food and coffee, but love being closer to family, other lovely friends, and having a backyard for the boys to run about. One of the great excitements for me, living in the Sydney 'burbs is that it seems that many of my local opshops are yet to have been discovered and picked over by professionals or serious opshoppers. Yippee! So there often fab finds to be had. Some which warrant a post of their very own.

I have recently just ventured into the land of crochet. I am loving having something to do whilst sitting with hubby on the lounge in front of the telly, instead of having to remove myself to the backyard shed, where my sewing machine etc lives. So when I stumbled on these eight vintage pattern books I was beside myself! And only $4.



Whilst cooking tea for the boys I picked out  few favourites to try, and then whipped this up in less than an hour - just amazing!



This is from the (red) Paragon Crochet Book - a collection of favourite Medallions (popular reprint R1 - sorry, no year of publication), and is the Star Motif. Of course the design is meant for doilies, and much finer thread, but I wanted to try a beefed up version with some chunky yarn. It photographed pretty terribly (taking photos at night will do that, but I was too excited to wait!), but it is in a soft, variegated brown and cream yarn. And it's BIG - probably about 25cm diameter.

So, now I am looking for a use for this big star motif... any ideas? Some of the patterns in this book are just gorgeous and I am beginning to think about flash crochet blankets, whizzy-bang scarves, and lah-dee-dah cushion covers...  The pattern book would have me keep going and make a trolley mat from a number of these... any other ideas?

Yippee! loving crochet!

Chat again soon xo