Meditative Crochet

Gosh, where have two weeks gone?! I’ve been very busy here making the most of the sunshine and playing in the garden with the little ones, I hope you have been equally as frivolous with the sunshine and longer, lighter evenings? I have been working on some things that Iv’e been itching to share but I’ll have to wait so in the mean time…

You may remember a few weeks ago I shared that I was darning the ends of a blanket whilst wrapped around a poorly little person. Well, finally, it is finished! Here’s the story…

It seems that blanket making is something I have become very fond of; the process is so therapeutic and each row ends with the satisfaction of knowing that you are one stripe closer to throwing yourself into yarn-y hugs with your one of a kind creation. However, after hours of counting 4, 2, 2, 4 in my head whilst hooking the Raspberry Ripple I was craving something simpler that I could really lose myself in, that I could just pick up and hook without the need to think let alone count. This craving happened to coincide with a guilty feeling I had about my littlest not having the handmade blanket that his older brother received when he was born (I’m strange, I admit, but you know this already) and so I set about making him one, even though he is nearly one now!!!

I gathered appropriately boyish colours as despite how much I try and hold onto every moment, he will not be a baby forever and so it couldn’t be a baby blanket but a boy’s blanket. It was a very simple task; chose a colour at random and stitch a row in either dc, htr or tr crochet. To avoid repetition I made only one rule; do not hook one of each colour in succession but before exhausting the range, go back and repeat a previous colour in a thinner row before inserting the last colour. Do you get it? So instead of going orange, meadow, cream, red, bottle green, blue, which would be all of the colours simply repeat (for example) the meadow between bottle green and blue. As im not very good at following the rules I did stick to it most of the time and it worked well I think (you can be the judge).

I wanted a simple border and found the grey yarn in my stash whilst digging around for something else. It was a great bit of luck as I absolutely love the colour contrast, I think it adds to the boyish look I was hoping to achieve. The green picot point edging was a last minute addition (yeah, I was just making things up as I went along) and although it took me all four edges to decide whether I liked it, I think it was the right choice and it gave me a chance to experiment as it was something I’d never done before.

All in all I think it was a success: I got a simple project to lose myself in, Baby got a blanket and I learnt something new :)

BUT….It’s highlighted how much there is still to learn, how the simple things aren’t always as easy as they look. I have still to master the edging, I feel that this is the hardest part of making a blanket because there is no strict right way to do it. Can you see how it forms waves at the edge? This is because there are too many stitches worked into the ends of the rows. Must work on this!

Look at this corner, tut tut! Admittedly I wasn’t following any kind of pattern and made each corner up as I came to it but at the time it seemed simple. The corner pulls up at the edge which means there are not enough stitches to turn it flat. As I write this I’m wondering if blocking will help??....i have never tried that either!

That being said, I love it and I don’t think my little one (or Buzz Lightyear) minds when he’s snuggled up in it that there are a few bumps and curves. It just adds to its charm. 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you again soon. This time it will be sooner that a fortnight I promise!

xx