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blankets

Spring blanket

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The sun has come out in the UK.  It is April and we have had a lovely few days of really warm weather.  I have been working on a blanket in spring colours and was looking for opportunities to work on this on my commute so I have incorporated some pretty flowers and blocks into the design that can be worked up separately and added to the larger work at home 🙂

Here are the colours I am using and you can see I have made a start with the first few rows in basic stitches.   I am trying Stylecraft DK for the first time as I have seen so many crochet bloggers recommending it.   It is certainly good value and has been very nice to work with so far.   There is a fantastic range of colours to inspire and I am already thinking about the next project and the next…. although that does not help me reduce my yarn stash!! (shhhh!!).

The flowers in the picture below will form a row across the blanket and I plan rows of pale pink and white to follow.   These flowers are perfect for working on my commute!!   I have been working up the centres one day and then adding petals the next so that I only ever have to carry one ball of yarn.

The main blanket is already quite large as I am aiming at double bed size.   It can only really be worked on at home now but it is growing quickly.  I love these colours they are making me really happy as I work 🙂

I am documenting the pattern as I go as I plan to list the blanket and pattern in my Etsy shop.  I will post an update when I get to the next stage and I am working up blocks on the commute.   One day I will get organised and issue these patterns as a CAL but I think I need a few more blog readers before I try that.   I wish I could spend more time on my crafting and blogging but I don’t suppose I am alone in that.  Too many ideas and too little time.   Ah well….

Happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

 

Knitted Blanket

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Now for a knitting project 🙂   I have been doing a lot of crochet lately and I miss having two needles on the go.    I grew up doing a lot of knitting and only recently started my crochet journey.    I bought this lovely super chunky yarn at a recent craft show.    This is 100% merino wool and beautifully soft.     I have three packs of 10 x 50g hanks which all need to be hand wound before I can start.    Time to enlist some help from the family!

I have decided to knit a blanket with this lovely yarn.   It needs to retain the softness of the yarn so the stitches must not be too tight.   The back needs to look respectable so that limits my options a bit.   Another challenge I have is that I have no idea how far the yarn will go.    I found a helpful calculator on Pinterest which I have put on my ‘Design’ board and based on that knitted up a square that I thought would use one ball.

For the blanket I decided to use circular needles and knit it in one go rather than have several squares to join.   The back of the blanket will be smoother and look better without joins.   To keep the stitch loose I decided to go up one size from the recommended needle size.   This puts me on massive 10mm needles 🙂

I picked the blue for the edges to frame the work with a darker edge.    I have estimated the use of the colours to try to use up all the yarn.   I can get hold of more of this but it comes in 10 hank packages which would make it quite expensive if I only need a little more!

The stitches I picked for the squares were ones that had a reverse side that looked good.   The only squares that don’t look as good on the reverse are the cable squares and I love cables sooooo much that I had to include some anyway 🙂

Here is how the project looks at the moment.    I will post again when I have finished and I will be writing up the pattern so I can list both the pattern and the blanket on my Etsy store.

I am not the fastest knitter by a long way but this knits up so quickly.     That is the beauty of knitting in a heavy gauge yarn!

That’s all for now.   I am going to review my stash to find inspiration for my next project 🙂

Happy Knitting!

Annie 🙂

 

Sample Squares

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Last Christmas I asked my husband for what he thought was a very strange present.  I asked him to get me one ball of each colour of a certain type of yarn.     I wanted to be able to play with the colours and to put together a blanket design based on all the colours available.    The yarn I had picked was Drops Paris.   I chose this because I wanted to work in heavy cotton and this yarn is so inexpensive it made the project affordable.     Apparently ordering the yarn one ball at a time was quite a lengthy process so my husband called the online retailer and some very helpful people processed his order by phone!

I designed a pattern for a small square and produced one of every colour except black.    I decided to use black to edge all the squares so didn’t want a black square.   Here is a picture of my finished set of one of every colour sample squares 🙂

I designed the blanket by laying these all out on the kitchen table and moving them around until I saw the design I wanted.   I then worked out how many more squares of each colour I needed and calculated my yarn requirement based on that.   I have placed a yarn order and I am now waiting for delivery.    Whilst waiting for the yarn to arrive, I used the single ball of black yarn that I did have to edge a few of the squares.   I am never sure whether I want to edge in black or white but I do think black is more practical.

When the yarn arrives I will be able to make up the rest of the blanket and will be sharing photos here.   I will put the pattern and the finished product up on my Etsy shop.   I have found this method of designing very quick and easy once I had made all the small squares.   It did take quite a long time to make up the sample squares though and I have ended up with a few that I will not be using.   I wouldn’t want to do this with a more expensive yarn.

This is the final theme for my project.   I have arranged the squares in a rainbow with a pastel, muted and bright row of each colour.   This is only possible because of the large range of colours in this particular yarn.   I hope you like the idea 🙂

If anyone would like the pattern for the coloured square it is available in the patterns section of my blog.     The blanket would be  a great stash busting project if you have a lot of oddments of yarn of similar weight.    I would recommend  using one colour for the edging of each square to pull the blanket into one design.

That’s all from me for now.  On to the next design…..

Happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

Sunshine Flower Blanket – edging

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This weekend I tackled the final stage of the design of my Sunshine Flower Blanket, the edging or border.   I wanted to use all three of the flower colours in the edging to bring the blanket together.   I also wanted to end with the red colour as that gives a strong border.   At first I was planning a repeat of the band using the three colours in increasing widths.    However, I didn’t feel that that would give  enough of a statement edge and also would have needed to be blocked in order to make it lie flat.

I couldn’t find a pattern that fitted with the rest of the blanket design in the way I wanted.   Finally, I decided to design my own edging after checking out a lot of different designs on Pinterest and in my various stitch bibles.

I came up with the design you can see in the picture below.   The first round is a simple band of Citrus then I worked a round of petals in Honeysuckle to echo the flower design and behind those, larger petals in red.    It took a few attempts to get the right degree of fullness in the petals whilst ensuring the edge would lie flat.  I am very pleased with the end result.    I would be happy to share the pattern for the edging if anyone is interested – please let me know by sending a comment 🙂

I have now finished the blanket.   I hope you like it.  It has been around six months since I started the project but I have worked on other items in that time.   I will be listing the blanket on Etsy or I might try Amazon Handmade but I will be very sorry to see it go!  I also plan to make two matching pillows as I have a couple of the flower squares left over and I think I have enough yarn too.   I will list the pillows on Etsy but might keep one to remind me of this lovely project 🙂

I have already started planning my next blanket project and will share as soon as I have fixed on a design.   I am also working up sample blocks from each colour in a range of cotton yarn that I was given at Christmas.   I think those sample blocks will end up in a sample colour blanket.   As ever I have far more project ideas than I have time.   A problem we all have I expect….

Bye for now, happy crocheting!!

Annie 🙂

 

Sunshine Flower Blanket – update!

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Hello – so excited to report the progress on my Sunshine Flower Blanket.

As you can see I now have all the large flowers added and I am working the final vanilla band before adding the edging.    I am going to edge it with the three colours I used for the flowers but I have a few more rows of Vanilla to work before then.

The blanket is getting quite big now – I think it will be around 1.5 meters square when I finish it.   My earlier posts on this project give you the source for the pattern for the large flowers (A Square A Day by Tracey Lord) and the colours I am using.   I will happily make the pattern available for the smaller flowers and the overall design if anyone would like to see it.   Please just leave me a comment (there is a link above and below this post).

I have already started on my next project so focusing on getting this one finished has been a bit of a struggle!  The rounds get so long towards the end so it feels like you are not making progress and the ends take a long time to weave in.   I am so pleased that I wound most of them in as I was working the squares.   I worked a lot of the squares on my daily commute so always made sure I had a needle with me to finish off the ends as I went.   I certainly wouldn’t like to start on all the ends from scratch when I had finished the blanket!

That is all from me for now – the next time I post on this project will be to show you the finished work which I will probably list on Etsy as a one off.  🙂

happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

Granny Square blankets

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A short post to share a couple of my projects from last year.

When I first started crocheting as a little girl I used to make granny square blankets with all my scrap yarn.    I used to knit a lot so I had quite a bit of scrap yarn left over!   I loved making the blankets and quickly progressed to buying odd balls of remnant yarn from our local wool shop with my pocket money!

I came back to crochet last year and again started with granny square blankets.    I made a huge blanket for our living room first.    My children had just had their rooms decorated and both asked for a blanket for their beds.    You can see the results below.    These blankets are very basic in terms of the stitches used.    They grow really really quickly and you can work them in front of the TV once you get into the rhythm!

This is the blanket my son wanted….

The blankets are very warm.   I think the ‘holes’ actually help the blankets hold the warmth – if that makes any sense.   They do munch an awful lot of yarn so really are excellent for using up scraps but if you are buying yarn to make them you should beware of the overall cost and choose a yarn to suit your budget!   As a guide these blankets are made out of Aran weight yarn and each weighs 2.7kg which would mean around 54 x 50g balls.   However, the blankets I made here are enormous, 2.5 metres square 🙂

This is my daughter’s blanket….

When I finally managed to convince them that the blankets were big enough I had to put an edge on them.    My son didn’t want anything ‘too fancy’ so his was just a couple of coloured bands.  My daughter went for a small scalloped edge.   The edge on my daughters took some time to do but again I think that was because of the sheer size!!

That’s all for now.   Only to let you know that I plan to make some smaller versions of these to sell in my Etsy shop as they make lovely cot blankets and I find them very relaxing to make.

Happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂