Star Garland (2) - finished!

This week I've worked on various projects. Mostly crochet. Finally I've managed to finish off my crocheted star garland :) Here's what it looks like now when all done and dusted :) This project comes from the book: Ros Badger Hook, yarn and crochet and it's been my favourite since the very beginning. It's even made into the cover star (yes, literally too, pun intended)

Below you can see the stars both on their right and wrong side.

I'm really pleased with how the whole thing has turned out. It's my first completed (more significant that just the simple crocheted flowers) project from a crafty book. I've learnt a lot about crochet with this one and now I can finally see the similarities and differences between the basic crochet stitches. At last I can make them out of my head, without help from any books. Everything in crochet starts to make sense to me. Like a jigsaw puzzle. That's a big step ahead. I feel like I'm getting more confident and adventurous with my crochet now that I can read better written instructions. I feel so encouraged to go further now with my still-basic crochet skills.

The garland is made of 15 stars - the brown and cream coloured ones have been knitted with an organic cotton Freedom Sincere yarn and the red ones have been made with Lerke of Dalegarn cotton.

Because it has been cold and rainy today I couldn't take my garland outside to take a photo of. Instead I had to do with some photos at home :-/ This is what it looks like when the garland is stretched over the mantlepiece:

This is just a temporary presentation to show you the span of the garland. I'm still looking forward to some nice weather to take it outside and will add the photos to this post later. Standing back and looking at it, I'm pleased with the colour combination. It doesn't look particularly Christmassy so I believe it could be used throughout the whole year, what do you think? However, I'll surely come back to this project as I'd like to crochet some stars in more Christmassy colours. Perhaps I'll crochet just single stars on their own to hang on the tree too.

Before the garland was finished it had to be blocked. This is something I hadn't done before. The books suggested to pin it down and steam it with an iron. I did exactly what it said but also sprayed the stars with some spray starch for the crisp finish. Not bad overall. The stars do keep their shape! Yay!

What to do with the rest of the cotton yarn? Obriously knit an Easter egg! I'm slowly building up my Easter egg collection this year. I have a vision in my head of making my Easter decoration in plain pastels and au naturel this year :)

Anybody on their Easter projects already?

Joining up the Hand-made Monday blog hop no 157 tonight. Very curious what others have been up to!
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