Tropical Shores Week 6

It’s Week 6 – the final week of the Tropical Shores blanket crochet-along which I’ve designed for King Cole. 🙂 How can 6 weeks have passed by already!

It’s been so wonderful… I’ve truly adored immersing myself in tropical coastlines (so very different to where I live) and I’ve enjoyed the tropical colours, the tropical textures and of course looking back at the diaries from my own trip to tropical shores exactly 20 years ago! 🙂

I hope you’ve enjoyed crocheting along and following along too… 🙂 I’ve particularly loved the tropical theme for this blanket…

This final week is about joining the squares together and then we have the border to crochet. I have kept the border relatively simple but I did have fun adding little palm trees scattered around the edge, just like along real Tropical Shores!

The free pattern is available over on the King Cole website here: https://www.kingcole.com/tropical-shores-crochet-along-blanket/

And here’s the YouTube tutorial from King Cole to accompany this week:

https://youtu.be/AEklvFtX9Z8

And here’s the final round-up which I really enjoy doing from photos shared over on social media. The first grid is from photos shared on Instagram, the second grid is from photos shared over in the Facebook Group ‘King Cole Craft Along’ and the third grid is from photos shared in my ‘Coastal Crochet’ Facebook Group. 🙂

As always thank you so much for sharing your beautiful photos! 😍🏝🌴💙 We have some gorgeous alternative colourways, we have amazing outdoor photos, we have some people already laying out their completed squares and we have lots of people only just starting out!

Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support and encouragement. There have been three crochet-along blanket designs from me this year… that’s a lot! My hooks are aways up to something and there will be lots to share over the coming months but no big crochet-along blankets until next year! 🙂 Maybe a simple blanket design but we’ll see… 😉

This week I’m on holiday with my family in North Cornwall… so far it’s been pretty wet and cool – no tropical weather at all! But it’s oh so very beautiful and we’re really enjoying a different coastline…

And here is the final diary entry from 20 years ago when I visited the Pacific Island of Moorea in French Polynesia together with my husband in 2001… 🙂

Sharing these diaries has been a true highlight for me. They haven’t been looked at for such a long time and reminiscing and remembering our trip has been really special! Lovely memories, some of which we haven’t thought about for ages, have resurfaced and been shared and it’s inspired me to look ahead to travels that might be enjoyed in the future once Covid subsides (let’s hope so!)…

The diaries this week are from the day we were leaving the island of Moorea and I befriended a local cat! Those tropical shores really left an impression on me… they were truly beautiful and I do hope one day to return! ☀️🌴

I’ve kept these diaries completely original… no changing of words, no editing, just the words and photos from a 20 years younger me!! Enjoy…

Sunday 21^st April, 2001

Extracts from my diary: We had to check out of our bungalow by 10.00 this morning. We were up early (as we have been everyday here) and got packing…

We had finished and were sitting on our veranda when a sweet little cat walked by. We called to it and sure enough she came slowly to us and gently meandered into our bungalow! She went into the bathroom and tried to drink the water on the shower floor so we filled a glass up and gave it to her which she seems to like. She sniffed around for a while (she was very petite and quite thin) and then I had an idea – I picked her up and put her on a soft mattress (the area which would make up a third bed in our bungalow) and she instantly settled. She washed herself for a while and then went fast asleep – she was in heaven! By now it was nearly 10.00 so we needed to check out. What to do with our new friend!? We decided to leave her there with the doors left open. We’ll never know the reaction of the cleaner!

We checked out and paid our final bill. We asked if we could leave our bags in the office as our transfer was not due to arrive until 4.30. We did this along with a few other people. We then walked to the shopping village to use up our last Polynesian currency. We went round the supermarket with a calculator and spent everything except 4 CFP – the equivalent of around 2 pence!

We walked back to the hotel and went to the beach where we enjoyed our final swim in the sea… we showered off under a shower outside a water sports hit and then placed things in the sun to dry.

We had some lunch at the beach bar – we only just managed to get a table although we did have to wait for it- a delicious ‘Special Burger’ which was a burger with egg, bacon, French Fries, salad and a sauce.

We spent the remainder of the time on the beach where I wrote a letter home and we paddled our feet in the sea just to help cool off. It’s amazing how quickly the time went as we soon had to head to the reception to get our transfer. The transfer was early and off we went! We caught the catamaran across to Tahiti which gave us one last view back to Moorea.We’re going to miss Moorea – it was a wonderful stay and very beautiful.

Extract from Steve’s diary: We then found some shade under a palm tree on the beach before one final toe dip in the warm sea. Our transfer collected us at 4.30pm and drove us to the ferry terminal for our catamaran ride across the water to Tahiti. We were quite sad to see the island of Moorea disappearing into the distance…

Happy Crocheting Everyone! 🙂