yet another blanket ::

as I mentioned on Monday, despite already having 3 crochet blankets in progress at the moment, I decided to take on yet another!

Hexagons this time, as requested by the mr.

I'm afraid I don't have a pattern link for this, as I sort of made it up myself from a photo provided to me by said mr.

I'm using a variety of acrylic yarns I already had, in some fantastically bright colours!

I initially thought I'd run this alongside my leap year blanket, doing a square for each everyday, but to be honest, I'm starting to think that the leap year blanket is going to be huge! As much I love the idea of a huge granny blanket, I expect realistically I only really have room for one of these in my life, so I'm thinking the hexagon will be more ideally suited as a lap blanket or maybe a single blanket for the boy's bedroom. This is assuming of course it doesn't just find it's way to the pile of incomplete projects!

work in progress :: navy afghan ::

I've recently been going through my huge stash of yarn and in the process coming across all sorts of uncompleted projects.  I don't think this is any great surprise to fellow crafters, it's something I think we're all pretty good at (there was a woman at the craft night I used to attend who had a cardigan she had been knitting for 20 years, when she came in wearing the finished garment, the whole group burst in to applause) but I do think I'm probably particularly good at abandoning projects somewhere just past the middle.  So in an effort to inspire me to finish them, I thought it a good idea to put them in my ravelry notebook (a lot of these were started long before I joined ravelry!) and blog about them here, therefore making them more obvious to me than when they are hidden inside a big old box of yarn!

So here goes, here is the first!

The first ever granny blanket I started making, possibly the first ever granny square I made, and certainly the first project I purposely went out to choose yarn for.  The original pattern and idea came from Erika Knights 'Simple Crochet', which was also the first crochet book I owned.

It's not even like there is an awful lot left to do on this poor neglected blanket!  All I need to do is edge a few of the squares in the navy and then put them all together.  At some point I've even weaved in all of the ends.

Really there is no excuse for this pure neglect!  I now even have a little boy who's bed will be perfect for a snuggly blue granny blanket like this, it's very strange to think how much my life has changed since I started it!

finding inspiration :: blankets ::

I was up crazy early this morning and I found myself snuggled up on the sofa, browsing flickr and dreaming of hooking up some lovely blankets.

Click on the photo's to find yourself at the flickr page of the creators of these beauties.

a blanket for the rug ::

well a blanket version  of the rug at least.

Ever since we got this rug I've intended to crochet a blanket which matched in some way.  Originally I was just going to use the colours and do a traditional granny square blanket.  But the more I've admired the rug and thought about the blanket to accompany it, the more I thought an exact replica might be the way to go.

I finally purchased the yarn on Saturday.  I decided to use the fabulously cheap stylecraft 100% acrylic double knit.  Yes I would love to make it a beautiful organic cotton, but realistically I just can't justify spending that much on yarn at the moment.  After hearing about Lucy of Attic 24's love for this yarn, in this post here, I thought I'd give it a go and actually it really is OK.  Plus it comes in so many colours!

After many different attempts (I even considered knitting it) I decided to work each block in straight trebles, working each colour as I came to it, rather than working from the middle out.  This way I can join each block as I go.

So I've only done 3 blocks so far, but so far so good!  Though I do get in a fairly massive tangle, trying to use all those colours at once!  My aim is to complete 7 blocks a week, if I stick to this, I should be done in a month and a half!  I won't be holding my breath!  But I shall keep updated.