Whopper Cotton and Snuggle Rainbow

Remember last year when I won a prize when my picture of a crochet doll I made was chosen for the Simply Crochet magazine readers’ page? No? Just me? Trust me, it was huge news in the BAM household at the time!

The prize winning dolly was Tuppence (made using a pattern from Simply Crochet magazine issue 29), and Claudia still plays with her. Her little red backpack is a perfect size to hide little pompoms!

My prize was ten balls of Cygnet Yarns Whopper Cotton. It definitely lives up to its name! It’s a cotton-acrylic blend worked on a 8 -12 mm hook (or needles) and it’s made up of ten quite distinct strands, which makes it a bit splitty to work with, but would surely make spectacular tassels!

Not that I made tassels (although now I think I totally should have!)

Give me a pile of different coloured yarns and automatically think rainbows. Often it’s yellow that is the missing ingredient, but fortunately there was a bright sunshiny yellow in my parcel, so I had what I needed. In a perfect world one of the balls of pink yarn would have been purple, but let’s not be picky!

I liked the idea of a rainbow that Claudie could cuddle, so I cobbled together a pattern for something that turned out to be something between a cuddly toy and a neck pillow.

I couldn’t have predicted what a huge hit Snuggle Rainbow would be with my little girl. He was immediately promoted to bedtime necessity, tucked safely under her right arm whilst her other favourite, Cuddle Bunny took her left.

Snuggle Rainbow made a bit of a dent in my Whopper stash, but I hadn’t even started on the white or pink yarn, and there were two balls of each. I wanted to continue the weather theme, and it seemed appropriate to make a little cloud as some people pronounce Claudia’s name as cloudier. (I do love a pun).

I definitely wanted it to be a cloud shape, so with a bit of experimentation I worked something out by making and sewing together a series of circles. I raided my stash of dk cotton and hooked up some raindrops to dangle at different lengths from the seam along the bottom edge.

Claudia loved it, recognising it as a raincloud straight away (phew!) and making it rain on all her toys! I was pleasantly surprised that it had actual play value to her, and it wasn’t just decorative.

I was now left with odd amounts of all the colours, and two whole balls of pink, and I wanted to make something that would use it up rather than just losing it in my stash. I’m not great at colour work with knitting but I figured a cushion cover would be good practice, and the Whopper yarn would make my mistakes easy to spot and correct.

On one side I did a crazy patchwork of different shapes (very much made up as I went along) with a large intasia heart and a strip of fairisle. On the other I did all fairisle.

It worked out as I hoped, and it was obvious when I went wrong! Overall I was pleased with the finished cushion, and I definitely will be attempting some more fairisle knitting soon.

So what do you think? Was it a good use of my goodies? Since I received my prize Deramores.com have started stocking Cygnet Whopper Cotton and I’d definitely recommend it!

Beth

😊