FATW6 – Adventures in Mosaic Crochet – Garden Theme – Strip 13 – Coffee & Friends by Adre Doidge

We are serving up another treat today with Strip 13, Coffee and Friends by Adre Doidge. This is the second pattern that Adre has shared with us for our FATW6 CAL. Her first one was Endeavor for our Geometric theme and we enjoyed it immensely. As we chat, eat and sip in our garden party, let us also sit back and reflect on this whole adventure. What have you learned along the way? Will you be working on more mosaic patterns in the future? We have certainly made new friends across the world, learned about different places and accumulated quite a cache of patterns. This week on Thursday we will be releasing the final, final strip. What a thrilling adventure! For today, enjoy this warm treat, savor the scents around you and crochet away. Thank you Adre Doidge for your wonderful patterns! Here is Adre’s bio. She is a talented woman with many interests.

“I am Adré Doidge, a South African living with her husband and very spoilt Tuxedo cat in Pietermaritzburg (most often just abbreviated toPMB), about 100km inland from Durban. It is the capital city of KwaZulu-Natal. Our City Hall is the largest red-brick building in the Southern Hemisphere.

PMB is known as a sports city as it features in some very prominent sports events (attracting local and international participants) like the Dusi Canoe Marathon and the Comrades Ultra Marathon, both being paddled or run respectively between PMB and Durban. It is also quite widely known for its mountain biking and, in August this year, our local multiple World Champion mountain bike racer, Greg Minnaar, won the World Downhill Championship.

KwaZulu-Natal is one of our beautiful coastal provinces in which you will also find Durban, much more widely known to tourists from afar. It also boasts my happy place, the spectacular Drakensberg (aptly called the Dragon Mountains as you can see from the second photo) to which I love to escape in order to restore my soul.

I am a retired, secondary school language educator who loves learning and exploring new things as well as being creative, so I have had my fingers in many pies. Apart from crochet and knitting (less so), some of the things I also love are gardening/flowers and baking. At the moment, being Summer here in South Africa, my garden is a profusion of colour. I love going outside every day to see what new bud has opened to delight me. Currently we are enjoying all the dahlias, Inca lilies, arums and day lilies that are flowering.

I have been crocheting on and off for about 50 years, having been taught by my mother to crochet thread doilies in the early 1970’s. I gave it up for a while, taking it up again seriously in about 2011 when I was introduced to all the patterns available on the internet (and found a new way to hold my yarn so that my pinkie did not hurt!)

I first discovered mosaic crochet in 2019 when I saw pictures of Lissa Conley’s Floral Elegance Throw come across my FB feed. This is the one I made and it is still one of my favourite pieces considering I love flowers so much.

Due to the plethora of help available now (as opposed to when I made this throw) from designers who generously share their knowledge, I taught myself to read and create mosaic graphs, but still have far to go in learning how to create more complicated mosaic designs like those in the round where there are increases to take into account.

I was asked to submit a design (I actually submitted two) for the Friends Around the World 6th Anniversary CAL (FATW6), hosted by CAL – Crochet A Long and, like another crochet design of mine, the Feathers Pocket Shawl, this all happened by chance, hence the reason I call myself an “accidental designer”. I have just recently also designed a very simple overlay Christmas-themed potholder so that I could give a mosaic beginner’s class at my LYS.

I am also trying to expand my design skills. You can find my Losange fingerless gloves for free on my website. I have also designed a matching cowl which will form part of a paid yarn and pattern combo done in collaboration with my very good Indie-dyer friend, Wendy Bloy, from Yarn Stash PMB.”

You can find Adre Doidge here:

Website: https://adredoidge.wixsite.com/website

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adre.creates/

These are the strips from our Makers. Nice, hot, steaming cups of coffee to go with your tea from last week.

You can also use this separately at your coffee station.

Mary’s blanket is almost done! Looks amazing.

Please note, this pattern is only downloadable from our blog. When working this pattern the extra stitch is in the beginning of each round after the first border stitch, so when working your repeats do not work that one again. Pattern for Coffee and Friends found here:

Coffee and Friends by Adre Doidge Download

If you are not a member of the Facebook Group CAL – Crochet A Long, you can request to join here and then join the event. You will be able to get to the Event if you are a member. Do share your photos.

Facebook Group

Link to the Event if you are already a member of CAL – Crochet A Long.

Event

Silvana

So far for this Garden themed blanket the patterns are

Strip 1 – Flamboyance by Lana Ignjatovivc

Strip 2 – Picket Fences by Suzanne Lively Boren

Strip 3 – Falling Leaves by Carola Herbst

Strip 4 – Roselyn Motif by Carolann Tuffo

Strip 5 – Springtime in Aotearoa by Jenness Fulton

Strip 6 – British Columbia Dogwood by Lucille Schubert

Strip 7 – Friends Around the Garden by Rosina Plane