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A few weeks ago, my daughter visited me in Nottingham (UK). She lives in the Netherlands and she always comes over for a few weeks during spring break, summer or Christmas. She showed me the possibility to import a drawing as numbers in excel and I was amazed, so yesterday I fooled around and my drawing looks something like this :o The drawings get a colour code now per pixel, and they convert the pixels to numbers to import in excel. I am so proud of what my daughter did for me, as it saves me the most boring work of my part of designing: converting a drawing to excel. Thank you so much Eveline, mom loves you loads and not only cause you are clever. Picture was taken in the time she still played with lego 20 years ago.

So I am always with patterns in the back of my mind and there are not many donkeys around. I started drawing donkeys after studying them and suddenly I wanted a mother and kid. So I setup my first skets (look at those legs, they are horrid, somehow I always forget a leg when I have to draw more then 2) This is just a composition sketch, but I thought the mom with her head over the little one was cute enough to keep. The donkeys however looked more like mules so I started to put in more lines My blurry lines became animals. But there was something wrong with moms shale. It was turned unnatural and I could not see (especially the legs) which one was which. I needed to clean this up as the pattern would be messy, so I turned mom :) This looks better. As you see this drawing has so many unnecessary lines, I started to clean up. I put my raster for mosaic and interlocking over the drawing and started drawing like a pattern (first setups as you know now are always rough drawings). The mom looks pretty cure already so I continued Still those legs look like trees... but well, I hope I would manage... and I got a little annoyed that I cannot draw legs! So I drew a few sets of legs hoping that they would fit better then the trees I had now (read no dynamics) I moved them around and kept working and adjusting them. At least mom looks reasonable now Mom is done, some shading adjustments will always come but for now I was reasonable happy with her, I started to work on with the foal. The bum was too high, so I went back sketching. This looks better but still those legs worried me I will go back to the drawing board, tweaking them and give it a back and foreground :) maybe hiding the hoofs as I need more pixels to make them look real (sometimes pattern drawing make you creative as you do not have an unlimited amount of pixels, read stitches).

Pro: Overlay Mosaic You work always at the front Easy colour change within a row More solid look (no netting) Easy to pick up the technique  Easy to crochet from a chart (you see what you do) or written pattern Uses front loop double crochet and backloop single crochet (US) to create a pattern Interlocking Filet No cutting of your yarn Loose look, it needs solid stitches to get rid of the netting Definition of the horizontal lines are clean Photo negative back Uses less yarn (unless it is fully solid) and does not need a border Uses double crochet (US) back of work or front of work and a chain to create a pattern   Contra: Overlay Mosaic You have to cut your yarn (unless you work in the round) Horizontal lines are less defined Striped back (which I kind of like) Uses more yarn Needs a border or sewing in fringe Ridges at the back Can pull to the left (lefthanded pull to the right)   Interlocking Filet You work on both sides so you have to turn your work (unless you work in the round) Loose look or the need for solid stitches to avoid netting The penny needs to drop to master the technique You need to crochet from the written pattern, only very advanced interlockers can crochet from a chart

G'day all y'all :) Everybody loves the look of an envelope border. It straightens your blanket and it feels like a luxury finish, but that setup first round, ouch! Some of us will never crochet an envelope border because of that first setup so lets try something different :) I am crocheting along the Gnomes with you and I am trying a new border. I hope it will look as good as how I crochet my border normally. I wanted to show you what I do in case you want to try this border with me. With my setup chain (which I never do, I always use a chainless HDC setup :) I add 4 chains, 2 for each side. Then I make my normal side stitch SS I make an extra s (I just like the extra space it creates) And then I do 1 chain and skip a chain on the row before creating a small hole Then I continue following the normal pattern At the end of the row, before the side stitch SS, I make a chain to make a little hole, skip one stitch on my previous row and then make an extra s followed by SS. All you need is 4 extra stitches. It will read as follows: SS, s, chain, pattern, chain, s, SS (as you see it only adds 4 stitches to the row) Now I never did my borders this way before, so I am very curious what the result will be :) It creates small holes on the side which I can use for the setup for my border which is the hardest part of your crochet work. I hole this makes it easier, but as mentioned before, I never tried this method yet, I was just eager to share it with you :) Oh tomorrow is the big Gnome launch day :P Lots of love and crochet fun, Anneke

In a previous blog I showed you how to bring a colour along your work, but in this video I show you how you could change a colour within a row without all those horrible ends to sew in the end. So please sit back with some popcorn and enjoy this professional video made by me :) I really had an off day and made some errors in this clip, but it is a waste not to show you. Happy hooking :P

I am working on my ZenTangle Dogs and I choose to do them in multiple colours. I have added the colour change in the written pattern so you do not have to guess where the colour change take place. Here under is how I bring two colours with me in all the B rows (background colours) As you'll see I leave some yarn at the back of my work to pick up in the next row. The result of how I do this is really great and more easy then I would have thought. Here under is how I do the A rows (pattern colour is just one to keep the pattern cohesive) I hope this is helpful and you all give it a try :) Happy Hooking, Anneke

Please all join my Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/384871122981049/ to get the code for this free pattern. Up you see the interlocking filet crochet version done by me :) Here under you see the back And here under the overlay mosaic version done by Tina Milledge Feel free to join my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/384871122981049/

I get a lot of questions if there is a program that converts a picture into a pattern. To my knowledge there is no satisfying one. I like to draw my patterns on my old Wacom drawing board (15 years and still going strong) in Gimp (free drawing, photo program). I have a setup of two screens (laptop and main computer) and I use one display for my models in several positions and a screen (attached to my main computer) to 'draw' on. My office is paperless and even my sketches I do freehand on my wacom. The advantage of going fully digital is I have no paper waste as I often change my mind and throw away more then I keep :) So I do a first setup, a few lines show me already if I can work with the drawing or not (for copy reasons I have to watermark all my jpg's) As you see here, this is not a professional drawing yet, and I almost threw this one away, but I liked the eye setup, so I took a bigger brush and started to fill in some quick shadows This made me more happy. I love to work in this blue (also my logo colour) as it is easy on my eyes, black is so dark and I often work with my layers (in Gimp you can put a drawing over a drawing over a drawing, each drawing called a layer) see through, so I can still see my outline. Now here comes my little trick: I put a raster (horizontal and vertical lines) over my drawing, each square (windows for interlocking, 3 dc's for mosaic) is 3 dc's. Then I put my drawing of my Leopard behind it and start to outline the stitches. You can see that this drawing is far from being a pattern, so I create my upper layer over these and start to draw over the raster, pixel by pixel For security reasons I had to blur the picture but you get the idea how a drawing for a pattern is made :) Then I zoom out and in often, and finally when I am happy I have the drawing but not the pattern. So the drawing is finished ;) and now the big trick starts. I import the full drawing into excel and start working That will be a next blog :p

Lately (after a pirate took my work and sold them on her own website) I am very careful with my pictures and patterns and watermark them all, and when I put my logo in the picture I always make sure it goes a little bit over the pattern so it is not very easy to remove. Piracy exist and if you have a gorgeous picture of your work, it almost gets stolen immediately. This is why I developed my logo. It has a white and dark outline and a colour that blends in easily. Clever people can still erase it, but it cost trouble and most pirates are lazy (lucky us :) ). So if you are annoyed by my watermark in my patterns please realise that I do this to protect my work.

Each first Wednesday of the month I will do a raffle! Post a picture of your work of one of my designs (free or bought) in my Facebook group, under the raffle posts. Then next Wednesday I will choose randomly one person who gets a free pattern of her/his choice Rules: One comment per person The picture of your work must be one of my designs (free or bought) Winners are excluded the next month and cannot enter with the same picture Picture must be a finished object :P Minimal total 10 entries for the raffle to start. If less it will be restarted a week later or cancelled :( Let the games begin To join AdO Crochet Facebook Group click here You must agree to the group rules to be able to enter And the winner is......

Soon I will publish an other design for mosaic in the round, and I'll join a video of how to make a turtle neck in the middle to make it a poncho :) I was very proud with the result: Because of this (I had ten balls of yarn left over of each colour. stylecraft special aran) and my son already asking for a sweater, I wondered if I could design one for overlay mosaic crochet. I could implement a simple design but how further. I started from the top down as that seems logic to me: The principle is almost the same as the poncho, except this is a rectangle for the shoulder part and not a square. I designed a little pattern, and from my turtle neck I started in the round. It was remarkable easy. Now how to do the front and back part. I went back to the drawing boards and broke my head on how to make several sizes. I thought one night I had the right idea, it was, but so hard to write it down. The principle is simple: you stop with in the round where your arm fits through the hole and your the chest width is ok. Then you start with the next number in line for the front and back panels (same for the sleeves). I thought that idea was brilliant but not easy for everybody to get or follow on charts (especially when you start with the front back panel and you have to find your sides by hand yourself). So I decided to do a lot of sizes so the sweater comes from s to 6xl :) As I do love overlay mosaic in the round (no ends to sew in) this sweater will be done fully in the round. The pattern is now with the testers who are puzzling with it and I will start making video's of how and what this week....

Sometimes it is just work. I always wanted to make a darker pattern but I had no idea what do draw yet. One night (I dream very lucid) I had a dream that resembled much a scene from Indiana Jones with the snakes crawling on the floor. The next day I came up with the idea to draw a snake. Now I am a chaotic person in my mind. I wanted more then a snake so I added a skull. I made my outline: I started with a black background and white outline but that did not work, so I inversed the co colours. It looked already better but still.. nah... no wow effect. I started playing with the layout in Gimp and I finally found out what I did not like about this setup. The snake was way too small. I drew a larger snake head: I was so happy with my new snake head that I fitted it directly on the grit (a grit that fits Interlocking filet and overlay mosaic crochet) but I still was not happy with the composition. Now the snake body was wrong. Back to Gimp and my faithful Wacom drawing board and I lay out a new path of the snake around the skull composition: I started to add details to the skull and went way too far but I did not see that yet :) I finished detailing the skull's jaw but now what to do with the snake body, realistic scales or more fantasy? I chose the latter and tried different scale patterns on the snake. I was stuck. Then I played around with some shapes and found a scale that made me happy, a simple cross with a filled in center should do, I started drawing snake's belly and more texture: I was happy with the snake but the contrast between the textures of the snake and skull were too big. I had to make a choice, making the snake skin more realistic? Or take details out of the skull? I choose the latter. I started deleting details from the skull molding it in a more clear outline and texture. I continued filling in the scales of the snake and added a very simple background and voila... a new blanket was born :) I imported the drawing in excel, to calculate the X chart and written pattern and now it is with the testers. Let me know if you want to see more blogs like this about my designs, I am still planning to capture a video of a creation :) Anneke