Sophie’s Universe CAL 2015

These days I am in the enviable position of making quilts and sewing for a living. I have a wonderful life and every day I count my blessings. But making your living with your hobby does give you one problem – you need a new hobby!

crochet is also part of my working life as I regularly teach it. But I don’t write crochet patterns (I have dabbled but it’s way harder than quilts!) so it still seems like a pastime rather than a job to me. Therefore crochet is now officially my ‘time-off craft’.

And Sophie’s Universe CAL 2015 is my new obsession!!!

I mentioned this a couple of months ago in this post when I first started. I have been working steadily during days off from quilting and sharing my progress on Instagram (where you can find 100’s of these by searching #sophiesuniversecal2015), but it’s nice to round things up on the blog where I have more room to discuss things and share with those of you not using IG.

There are 21 parts to this CAL and I have just finished part 7, which included those adorable pink roses near the edge in the above photo. The actual CAL in real time finished a few weeks back so you can check out what some of the finished blankets looks like in this post on a separate blog.

I encountered this when they were up to around part 14 and it was already looking spectacular, but lots of folk started this off not knowing how it was going to look when it was finished. Also some mad crocheters have made 4 or 5 at the same time!!! I just don’t know how their wrists take it, I am such an old crock I have to wear a strap round my left wrist for all hand crafting and even FMQ!

The whole thing is the brain child of crochet genius Deidri of Look What I Made blog. She has done an incredibly thorough job with video tutorials for difficult techniques, translations into different languages plus yarn requirements and samples for 3 different blankets – 4-ply, DK and worsted. I am SO impressed with this CAL! And also it is spot on all the way through, as by now any slight errors have been ironed out by earlier users.

Here is the first Sophie post if you’d like to get started on your own blanket.

I am making mine using Sublime Extra Fine Merino DK. I recently bought a lot of new colours but they sold out in the shop before I got a chance to list them online! I have just ordered more and am planning a ‘Sophie Inspiration Pack’ very soon.

The whole thing is wonderful colour therapy for me. I love choosing which colour to use next.

And this is what it’s going to look like when it’s finished (unless I go on to do the optional borders to make it rectangular, and realistically I will probably be unable to resist!). This is Deidri’s DK version, stunning isn’t it? It’s about 1.4M squared.

Unfortunately my OH hates it! I have discovered that he actually doesn’t like wool as he doesn’t mind it in a photograph just not in real life!