Oh my! I thought box 3 was good but wow, box 4 is even better!  I have subscribed to this box since the first one and I strongly feel they have been worth every penny.  The outside of the box is beautifully designed and it has been well packaged in a padded envelope and the UK postal service has managed to not damage the box.  I am truly blown away by the quality of each box; Sarah-Jayne really knows what she is doing when curating them!

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Box Contents

Yarn

This month we get 150g of Bergere de France yarn, 50g each of three colours – Girolle (yellow), Calanque (teal) and Everest (white), a very different palette of colours than the softer shades of previous boxes. Each 50g ball has around 125m so we are getting about 375m of yarn in this box.  This is a double knit weight yarn comprised of 40% worsted wool, 30% acrylic and 30% polyamide and can be bought for around £4 per 50g.  This yarn feels nice to work with, though it feels a little thin for a DK weight.  It doesn’t split, which is always good, and the colours complement each other really well.  

One thing about this yarn is if, like me, you like to pull from the centre, expect huge yarn barf! Out of the three balls, I got a huge chunk of yarn come out when I looked for the inside end.  I prefer pulling from the centre where possible as it controls how much the balls move around while I work. This quantity of yarn was enough to make both the cushion and the polar bear patterns with a little help from my stash.

Crochet Tools

Now for the goodies!  This month I squealed with delight at the gorgeous extras in the box.  My favourite being the design notebooks, of which there are three, each with a different design purpose in mind.  The blue one is for designing corner-to -corner projects with graph paper inside; the pink one has plain pages for sketching out ideas, and the white one has lots of little circles in lines that imitate how stitches sit in tapestry crochet for designing tapestry projects such as the hat and cushion patterns.  

Alongside the lovely notebooks are a couple of pencils in the style of the box with a pencil sharpener and a 3mm hook, again with a handmade polymer resin handle in complementary colours to the box design.  A comment about this month’s hook is that I found, with continuous use, the pink polymer started to turn a little purple where I rest my thumb. I’m not sure if this is due to my skin oils or if it’s something to do with the handle but I haven’t experienced this with other brands of hook before.

Pattern Book

This month’s book features the usual three patterns; a cushion, a polar bear toy and a hat, all with a Nordic inspiration.  The designer chat is with Alison North, designer of this month’s toy pattern.  We also get a page telling us a little about the yarn and the company that makes it.  A little later in the book is a page that shows how to use the design notebooks that are in the box and a page of the makes that have been shared on Instagram.

Projects

Girolle the Polar Bear

Girolle has been designed by Alison North of Kornflake Stew and is a toy made in the amigurumi style of crochet.  This little polar bear was a joy to make, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t really like making amigurumi. The pattern was fairly straightforward and my finished piece actually looks close to the image in the book, which is an improvement on my attempts at last month’s unicorn.  I made this using the yarn that came in the box that was left over from making the cushion, though I did have to use a little Stylecraft Special cream yarn to finish him off. I did make a little mistake on his arms, misreading the pattern and starting with 6 dc stitches instead of 9, so they finished off a little skinny!  One thing missing in the pattern were instructions on how to sew on the arms, although this wasn’t a tricky undertaking.

Watching the accompanying video, I appreciated that there was more finishing advice to help with completing the project.  This was my main complaint last month with the unicorn pattern, which was a more complex project than this. Less help was needed with this less complex pattern but the help was gratefully received.

Winter Love Cushion

A beautiful cushion designed by Ashley Kelly of Love and Loop,  this is the project that I decided to use the included yarn on. Th design uses the tapestry style of crochet, a method I have already encountered in the first box.  I quite enjoyed making this one, it was one of those projects that, when you first see it, you wonder if it might be a bit beyond your skills. However, it was very easy. I took my time at first but the repeats on the individual sections of the pattern were simple enough that once you got going it was fairly quick going. The front only took me a couple of evenings to complete. 

The cushion did come out a bit small.  I think I could have gotten away with using a 3.5mm or even a 4mm hook given that I had enough yarn left over to make the polar bear but I was conscious that one of the projects in a previous box had a lot of people running out of yarn, so I stuck with the smaller hook.  Instead of a cushion pad, I used toy stuffing as I always have a large bag of it in the cupboard. I may have understuffed it but it still looks quite good.

Alpine Hat

The final pattern this month is a hat designed by Ola Ogunlolu of The Rookie Hooker.  This hat has a nordic fair isle style of pattern on it which is quite lovely.  For this pattern I have gone stash diving and decided to use some of my recent haul from Aldi.  I used blue and mustard yarn and a 4mm hook, making it to the large size as I have a big noggin!  This larger hook size was a bit of a mistake, a consequence of not starting with a gauge swatch, and it was a little large but it was saved by the use of a 3.5mm hook for the ribbing.  I enjoyed making this hat and it worked up quite quickly. I didn’t use the video for this project so I can’t comment on it’s usefulness but the pattern is simple enough to have not needed it.

If you like what you have seen here, check out the Crochet Society website as they may have some box 4s left.  This is where you can go to subscribe to later issues of the boxes and get to experience the feeling of Christmas morning once a month with me.  Closing date for box 5 subscriptions is 20th October so be quick if you don’t want to miss out. If you want to keep up to date with what is in future boxes, Sarah-Jayne of Bella Coco usually does a live unboxing a week or two after the boxes have been sent out on her Facebook page.  I will also post my blog on the box a day or two later for you to get a users honest opinions.

Much Love 

Helen

P.S. I have added links into the text of this blog but I’m unsure if they are showing as links on the actual site (it doesn’t on my phone).  I would appreciate it if you could leave me a comment if you found them and if they worked for you.