Smug summer crochet

Now, I'm rather pleased with this. I wanted to make something in cotton, but I'm not a huge fan of garments in cotton yarn. Then I had a browse through Susan Cropper's book, Vintage Crochet, and saw patterns for those crochet pot covers with little bead things on them which keep insects from falling into your cup of tea... or wine glass! The pattern is by Emma Seddon and she edges them with vintage buttons, rather than beads, which I really like the look of. Mine has buttons from a charity shop so they're not at all expensive to make.

I used DK Sublime Egyptian Cotton, which comes in a 50g ball (115 yards). I should think I've used about half of it - there's quite a lot of crochet in there! Two possible problems: one is that the buttons don't move as easily as beads would long the yarn. This matters because you thread all of your buttons onto the yarn before you start the crochet, so you have to shunt them along rather a lot before you get to the final row when you actually incorporate them into the stitches. This is just a bit of a pain - the end result is worth it, but I did spend rather a long time moving buttons along. The other problem is that, although I religiously counted the buttons onto the yarn, and followed the pattern as closely as I could, I still ended up with two too few buttons for the number of scallops I had when it got to the last row. So, somewhere along the way, it's grown.... I counted the spokes in the first couple of rounds ... then felt a bit lazy and just left two scallops without buttons hanging from them, one on each side. And, for this, I'm fine with that!

I'm now beginning another one in blue. My first one was the "Tumbler Cover" and the blue one will be slightly larger, I think, and is called the "Milk Pitcher Cover". But really, both fit rather nicely over a wineglass:

So, should it ever be nice enough to sit outside, sipping wine - I'll be ready!

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