My First Blogiversary!

Hello World, and welcome to K-town today! I can't believe that it is my first Blogiversary today - time flies when you're having fun, and it's been a whole lot of fun indeed!

365 days, that means 165 posts, 1404 lovely comments, over 130000 visits, and 475 followers. When I started this blog one year ago, I never thought that it would be so much fun, and that I'd meet so many lovely people out there in blogland and here in k-town. If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be celebrating this Blogiversary today, so to all of you out there:

♥ Danke ♥ Thank You ♥ Merci ♥ Dank je ♥ Grazie ♥ Takk ♥ Dziękuję ♥ Obrigada ♥ спасибо ♥ Hvala ♥ Gracias ♥ Tack ♥ Teşekkür Ederim ♥ Děkuji ♥ ευχαριστώ ♥

Now to the fun part you've been waiting for: The Giveaway! I've already mentioned before that this time you can win this garland with 19 little button-flowers:

Remember my last two Giveaways? In the first one, you had to guess the weight of the giveaway stone, in the second one you had to guess the number of buttons in a Whiskey glass. And guess what - this time I'd like to know:

How long is this flower garland?

I've found out that the length of the garland varies a lot, depending if it's stretched or loose, and I've decided to use the length of the garland when it's lying loose on the floor (that was the easiest way to measure it). If you'd like to enter my giveaway, all you have to do is

• leave a comment and enter your guess in a common unit of length (i.e. centimeter, meter, inches, foot or similar).
• Please make sure to make one guess only!
• Of course you can score extra-points again: If you mention this giveaway on your blog (and tell me about it) you "win" a tolerance of +/- 10cm or 4 inches, i.e. if your guess is 320cm, you're in with any number between 310cm and 330cm (if your guess is 126", you're in with any number between 122" and 130").
• The one who's closest to the right length (or enters the correct length first) wins.
• This Giveaway will close one week from now, and I'll announce the winner one day later, on May 26th.

And since this is my Blogiversary, there might be another surprise in store... *gg*

Edit (a few hours later): I've replied to some of your comments now, giving you the bonus cm's and converting the foot and inches to centimeters - this makes it easier for me to compare the results later! :)

Good luck to you all!!!

 

Theme Party # 2: Flowers

Welcome to our link-party in September! For this month's theme party you've voted for the "Flower" topic, and I'm so looking forward to the wonderful crochet flowers you're gonna link up here!

Some things you should keep in mind:

What you see is what you get: please link to the specific post where your chosen project can be found (not just your main blog address), and make sure that your post is about crochet and matches the given theme! No shops! Please understand that I might remove links that ignore these points.

Feel free to post as many links as you like - you should really search in the depths of your archives to retrieve your forgotten treasures, this is your chance to bring them back to the surface! :)

When this collection is closed, you'll have the chance to vote for the topic of the next theme party in October! If you've got suggestions for more topics, please post them here :)

This collection can be found at The Crochet Boulevard now!

Bavarian Popcorn Flower Pattern

Pattern: Made in K-Town by Barbara

Please respect my rights as designer: do not sell, share, translate, or publish any parts of this pattern (including pictures) online or elsewhere without my permission. Do not claim this pattern as your own. Feel free to sell the finished items you’ve made from my pattern! If you do, a link-back to my blog www.made-in-k-town.blogspot.de would be great.
Thank you! 

Material:

As usual, I used small amounts of Catania by Schachenmayer and a 2.5mm hook. My flowers measure 7cm (2.8 inches) but the size will vary depending on the yarn you use.

Some general notes:

For this pattern I use US crochet terms. We’ll need the following stitches: chain stitch (ch), slip stitch (sl st), single crochet (sc), double crochet (dc), and popcorn stitch.

I did NOT write down the chains at the beginning of each round: for the first stitch in every round, work chains (e.g. 3 chains for the first dc) OR start with a “standing stitch” i.e. join the new color with a slip knot or a simple loop ON YOUR HOOK and just work the first sc or dc as usual. Join rounds with a sl st.

Ready? Here we go:

1st Round: Start with a sliding loop (or “magic ring”) and work (1 dc, ch1) 10x inside the loop, fasten off.

2nd Round (new color): work (1 sc, ch2) in every ch1-space, fasten off.

3rd Round (new color): work (1 popcorn, ch4) in every ch2-space, fasten off. For the popcorn, make 4 dc in the ch2-space, drop loop from hook and insert hook from front to back through top of the first dc, then into dropped loop, yarn over and pull through both loops on hook.

4th Round (new color): work (1 sl st, ch2, 6 dc, ch2, 1 sl st) in every ch4-space, fasten off and weave in all the ends.

Tadaah - the Bavarian Popcorn Flower is finished!

 Hmmmm, I think there’s something missing… - ah, of course!

Aaaah, much better... :)

(Visit my previous post for more pictures of the Bavarian Popcorn Flower)

I hope you'll enjoy making these flowers as much as I do, but be warned: once you start making them, you just can't stop! :)

Bavarian Popcorn Flowers

Tadaah! Yesterday I managed to weave in all the ends of my flowers (22 x 8 = 176 threads... wow!) and here's the whole collection:

There are already so many lovely flowers out there, I'm just thinking about the Japanese or the African Flower. So I needed a name for my flowers and first I thought about calling them "German Flowers" - sounds boring, don't you think?

Then I thought, well, I'm from Bavaria, and I used the Popcorn Stitch, so why not call it "Bavarian Popcorn Flower"?

Of course I couldn't resist to embellish some of them with buttons...

and here you see a little basket with one of the flowers sewed on:

I hope I'll manage to write down the pattern tonight, so I can post it tomorrow. Thanks for your lovely comments, I'm glad you like the Bavarian Popcorn Flower and hope you've enjoyed today's pictures!

edit: here's the pattern

FIP - Flowers in Progress

What is it about crocheted flowers, that you just can't stop making them, once you've finished the first one?

On friday evening I've found the "perfect" pattern at last, and spent the whole week-end making flowers. By the way: it was an absolutely amazing week-end!! On saturday afternoon, John and me spontaneously packed our suitcase and joined some friends on a week-end trip to Kufstein, Austria. They've got a deal in a Poker Club down there, that when you're playing more than four hours, you'll get the hotel room and the breakfast for free. So I was sitting at the Poker table the whole night, waiting for good cards and making little flowers :) I always need some kind of distraction when I'm playing Poker, because this prevents me from playing bad hands just because I'm bored. The plan worked out very well, John and me both have won (even though John didn't make any flowers!) :)

Despite a very short night, we got up early on Sunday and walked to the castle in Kufstein. The weather was lovely and it was just a perfect day! In the afternoon John went back to the room to sleep a little, and I stayed outside in the sun, drinking coffee and making even more flowers. I was soon joined by a little girl from Italy who kept asking me questions about the flowers - unfortunately I didn't understand a word, and she didn't understand that I didn't understand, so we had a nice little conversation :) Her mother told me (in English) that the girl just wanted to watch and learn, so I let her watch, cut the thread after each round, and then I gave her the finished flower. I hope that helped :)

Later in the evening we went back to the Poker Club, waiting for more good hands to play and making even more flowers - it was a very productive week-end in every way :)

I've forgot to bring a needle to Austria, so I haven't weaved in the ends yet. I hope I can show you the finished flowers and the pattern later this week, so please come back if you'd like to see more. I've seen dozens of different flowers out there in blogland, but I can't remember seeing exactly this one. If you've seen this flower before, please let me know!

Wow, a long blog post today! Just another quick note before I forget about it: You can still vote for the theme of the upcoming link-party! The poll will close on thursday night, and it still looks very good for the grannies! I'm thinking about friday or saturday for the link-party, so please make sure you don't miss the fun :)

Have a wonderful week everybody!