It is no secret that I love the colour red. My friends will tell you that it is my favourite colour to wear. I have owned a succession of pairs of red shoes or boots (although I don’t have any at the moment, tut, tut!) and I have a stash of lace weight yarn with a definite bias towards red. I saw some of Hilda Grahnat’s work on Flipboard a couple of weeks ago, and her wonderful vintage collections by colour inspired me to do a post on a colour theme. Here’s her red collection: Without her flair or photography equipment, I have put together a ‘red’ collage of some of my crafty bits and pieces. From left to right, top to bottom: 1. A doll I made from Simplicity pattern 1900, with red polka dot dress. It was Miss Maggie rabbit that set me off on the doll sewing track. I enjoyed making her so much that I decided to do a bit more sewing. I don’t know what it is about making dolls that I find so appealing! If you had said to me that I would like making dolls I don’t think I would relate to it at all. I think the word ‘doll’ conjures up images of scary plastic things with clothes knitted in acrylic. It must be partly because the clothes that you make for them are small, and I am hopeless at finishing larger garments. 🙂 2. The Russian Ami Santas I posted about recently. I found out last week that you can now get the pattern for the large Santa from Simply Crochet for free. Download the Simply Knitting app on Apple Newsstand and you can find it under the ‘free content’ link. As it is packaged with some other Christmas patterns, it probably won’t be around for ever, so go and get it now! 3. DMC Petra 3, in shade 5666. I love using this yarn for crochet. I usually use a 3mm hook, although a 2.5mm works well too. There are so many fantastic colours, and 1 ball always seems to go quite a long way. 4. My crochet lampshade from the first issue of Simply Crochet. I give the link to the options for digital editions here because I don’t think the print edition of Issue 1 is still available. I’ve got the lampshade at home again now, but the paper lantern got a bit battered so it needs sorting out. What I want to do is to stiffen the crochet so that it holds it’s shape without the lantern, but I’m not sure how to go about it at the minute. Yet another job on my to-do list. 5. A necklace I made a while ago from coloured felt beads with seed beads. Still one of my favourites. 6. A WIP shawl from the recuerdos de infancia pattern on Ravelry. The main stitch pattern is nice and easy, but I wanted to add a different border. Once I had worked the main body of the shawl, it was a more ‘pointy’ shape than I wanted, so I decided to try adding further staggered rows on either side to make the angle more shallow. This worked ok one one side, but not the other, and I still haven’t worked it out. Another project consigned to the pile!