FO Friday- A little story

Once upon a time, several years ago, I learnt to crochet. This was mostly because someone I worked with was talking about it and I thought it sounded interesting. I bought a beginners book, some hooks and yarn and away we went.

Several years later, when hunting in the loft for something I found a blanket, neatly tucked away. With the impending arrival of my newest niece I decided it would make a suitable present, whilst also clearing a little space in my loft.  

I bunged it through the wash, for it is (gasp) acrylic, and sent it off to my sister.

I think I made up the pattern as I went along, it appears to be trebles with a border of doubles. I think I remember working it in strips, and appear to have crocheted it together as I went. I have no idea how I did this. 

So it has found its happy ending, for my sister uses it more than the lovely bamboo blanket I purchased for said little person.

Knitterly/yarn snob note- Seriously this is nasty yarn, I bought it when I had no idea about yarn or anything yarn related. I am not opposed to acrylic, it is handy stuff since babies tend to leak from all ends but I would find something nicer now. Still it washes nicely and seems ok softness-wise.

FO Friday- Blanket squares

FO Friday has officially become an obsession, I had a little panic on Wednesday when I realised I didn't have anything to share!

However, I found these photos lurking in my crafting photos folder and although I thought I had shared them before I checked through my past post list and can't find them, so hopefully they are new to you. If not I am a rubbish blogger and full of fail, but never mind :D

I took part in a group project on Ravelry to make a blanket for a lady (hmm, seems wrong, she is about 25, lady? girl? young woman?, anyway) who had lost her husband to cancer. Each of us made two eight inch squares and a wonderful volunteer sewed them together. I seriously think she is wonderful, and maybe a little mad, because I hate the sewing up bits.

I started trying to adjust and follow some square patterns from Ravelry, but in the end I cast on the right number of stitches and chose two stitches from by stitch dictionary (Field Guide to Knitting by Jackie Pawlowski). I found the long tail cast on handy here as the cast on is the actual length of the work, with a cable cast on the cast on stitches are much narrower and you don't get an accurate width until you knit the first row.

 Clover eyelet stitch

Wildflower knot stitch pattern

For my squares I used Wendy Sorento yarn, it feels lovely, smooth with a sort of cottony feel, but softer. I have to admit is a very good price, each square used less than half a ball so it would be quite reasonable for a big project.. It is a little splitty though and sewing the ends in was a bit of a pain. 

I am feeling the urge to make a brightly coloured blanket for myself, I have seen lots of beautiful rainbow ones recently and think they would be super in the manky British winter for brightening the place up. However, I REALLY don't need another big project so I think I will muse on it for a bit and hopefully get distracted by something else. If not I might request the yarn for Christmas and make it in January when things should be a bit quieter.

Year of projects- the post in which the blanket has grown and I did some maths

The Hemlock ring blanket has grown, I am well into the feather and fan section now but have got to the point that it gets a bit boring. It is ideal TV knitting though and I am trying to do at least one round each day.

Because of all my yarn winding to find a decent length for the blanket I ended up with quite a few balls of various sizes.

The ball band does not have any information on yardage so I measured out 20m (the remeasured and found it was only 19m), weighed it and divided the weight by the length. This gave the weight i g per meter.

I could then look through my patterns and find how many metres each needs and work out which ball fitted best. I have sorted out yarn balls for the socks, hat, crown and owl.



I am not totally confident of my maths (although it seems simple enough) as it has the cardigan needing about 900g of yarn, compared to the 550g listed in the pattern. This could be simply because of the different fibre or a more tightly wound yarn. I am going to make one of the other patterns and see if the ball has the correct amount before I start dyeing for the cardigan.

Scrap down- Blanket squares

This is actually several scrap downs, but as they are all the same pattern I figured I would post them as one.

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A few weeks ago I found a link to the Homemade Hugs facebook group via Ravelry. They are collecting eight inch squares to make into blankets. These will be sent to Japan as Homemade hugs once the initial disaster relief efforts are done.

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s This was my first square, it is actually going to the Age Concern patchwork pledge project instead as I was not happy about the amount of black in there.

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The pattern is very simple, garter stitch squares worked on the diagonal:

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4.5mm needles

DK yarn

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CO 3 sts

Sl1, kfb, k to end. Repeat until edge is desired size of square

k 2 rows

sl1, ssk, k to end. Repeat until 3 sts left.

Cast off

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Block/ pull gently into a square.

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This makes it easy to make the squares the size you want them to be.

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It was also a great way to use up all the DK from my scrap down stash. Each takes about 20g for an eight inch square.

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