January challenge – the big ripply one

This was of course a December make but I couldn’t do the big reveal until after Christmas, so it has now been re-named:

Made in Drops Nepal off white (0100), light grey mix (0500) grey mix (0501) and medium grey mix (0517) on a 7mm hook, using Attic 24’s neat ripple pattern. I used 9 balls of white and 6 each of the greys and had a little of each left over.

I started with a chain of 129 stitches to make the blanket 9 ripples wide (97cm). This worked out quite well yarn-wise as each ball was enough for 4 rows, without any mid-row joining. The blanket is 37 wide ripples long (170cm) which will hopefully be a good size for snuggling under.

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December challenge – the snuggly one

This month’s challenge is my biggest yet. A house-warming / Christmas present for a friend. Her living room colour scheme is grey and mustard, and this is a throw for her sofa:

Made in Drops Nepal Unicolour ‘Goldenrod’ on a 7mm hook using the corner to corner technique. It measure 175 x 95 cm and took 28 balls of yarn.

It is 85 by 50 squares, so 4,250 squares in total, or 12,750 stitches – worth the effort I think!

September challenge – a big one

Those of you who know me will know that my preference is for small, achievable projects. A fortnight is about my maximum length of time on any one project, and any longer sees me straying well outside my comfort zone. I don’t know what the hurdle is – uncertainty that the project will get finished? Worry that I will waste a lot of yarn? Whatever the reason size has always been a problem for me. So this months challenge is something big – an adult size throw or blanket, made in an adult colour palette:

It is based on a granny rectangle, so is a fairly safe project, but it has felt like a long haul getting this far. The yarn is all Jamieson and Smith Shetland 2 ply jumper yarn, and came from the stash of my lovely friend Maureen. When it is finished I plan to donate it to the Day centre that she volunteered in, and hope that they will be able to sell it to raise funds. It is not the jumper that she planned on making with the yarn, but I feel she would have approved.

Some of the colours are discontinued but the ones I can still identify are: Charcoal 81, Green 65, Maroon 43, Pink (FC22 mix?) and Blue (FC 37mix?). I made it on a 4mm hook.

Six a day

Six squares a day and ten days later we have a blanket:

All sixty squares have been incorporated into this highly colourful blanket. At 2.3 x 1.4m and 1.9kg it is definitely the biggest project I have worked on, and I confess that once I got over the hurdle of actually starting, it turned out to be not such aa big job as I imagined.
It is off for sale now in aid of the Highland Hospice.

We have a plan

A visit from a colour-conscious friend, and a specially cleared living room floor have produced this layout for the Granny square blanket:

The charcoal yarn for the borders has arrived, and I have set myself a target of six squares a day to join-as-you-go. Watch this space!

My work is done

We had some very welcome visitors just before the October break and I had the pleasure of introducing the Granny rectangle pattern to one of them .
One tutorial later and a couple of weeks of her own work and this is what she has come up with:

Made in Stylecraft special dk Plum (1061) Petrol (1708) and Grape (1067) on a 4mm hook.
I think that is quite an achievement.

Advice please!

I have been given sixty nine-round granny squares with a request to make them into an adult size blanket.

Any advice on a quick and effective joining method? I am not a big fan of sewing but I feel join-as-you-go may prove rather onerous given the scale of the project.
What would you do? All advice gratefully received…

Saying hello to an old friend

As some of you will know most of my crochet is done for destinations other than this house, and it is a fairly rare for me to make a piece with the intention of keeping it. However this blanket was an exception:

I made it a while ago (see here), but I had put it in a place where I hardly ever saw it and it seemed to be time to bring it back out and say hello again.

Doing it well

There is a phrase that goes ‘If you are going to do something, do it well’ and this blanket, which a friend of mine is making, brings it to mind:

She is a beginner (can you believe it?) who took some lessons a few weeks ago and decided to start her crochet journey with this linen stitch blanket (see here for the pattern). Made in Drops Alaska Off white and Grey mix on a 6.5mm hook.

I am so impressed with her progress so far, and excited to think that there may be more great crochet things to come!

A blanket for Kerry Anne

You might remember that we have two dolls, saved from when our children were small, called Jack and Kerry Anne. Since I took up crochet they have provided me with some wonderful opportunities to try things on a small scale and find out if I like them.
So here, in the spirit of trying new things, is a blanket for Kerry Anne.

Made using a V-stitch, in Drops cotton merino on a 4mm hook. The colours are: pistachio, light grey, white, powder pink, lilac, and coral (left over from my https://iamsimplyhooked.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/candy-crush-blanket/).

Hexagon blanket

I have had such fun making this, and am delighted with the results – it has a sort of dated charm I think!

The hexagon idea originally came from Erica Knight’s book ‘Essential crochet’. I found a tutorial for making the half hexagons on the ‘Polka dot cottage’ website, then a video showing how to ‘join as you go’ on Youtube. I have never blocked my work before but this blanket really needed it to get all the shapes fitting together properly with a straight edge.
Made in Rowan wool cotton DK Larkspur, Ship-shape, Cypress, Celadon, Smalt, Paper, Clear, Bilberry, Grand, Frozen, Dream (discontinued) Mellow yellow (discontinued) Bronze (discontinued) and Oxblood. All on a 4mm hook.

Vivian’s mitred square blanket

I had a lovely email from a fellow blogger with a photo of her new mitred square blanket

Isn’t it striking? So good to share ideas