The latest blanket

I had a brilliant idea a while back. I was jealous of the brightly coloured wool that one of The Stitchettes was using to make a blanket and I almost started salivating when I realised that big fat balls of it could be mine for the princely sum of £1.10 a ball from my local wool shop. I hadn’t made anything with cheapazoid wool, the two blankets I have made have been with my beautiful, beloved Baby Rico wool.

But I had a little spark in my head. And these don’t happen often. I don’t really have an artistic head you see, I’m not the ideas person. My brain just doesn’t work that way for some reason and although I’m engaging in fairly arty activities I find it incredibly difficult, if not nigh on impossible, to come up with a concept and an idea.

So I knew I had to grab hold of this idea with both hands. I would make a blanket for someone for Christmas. A friend in Manchester lives in a pretty cold and draughty flat and doesn’t have a lot of money for heating and has a few health problems – I would make her a blanket and it would be useful for her.

But it would be more than that.

It would be pretty.

I still haven’t got around to mastering the ripple, which is annoying me but is just a case of not having the time to sit and do something which might not be productive. But I didn’t want to do yet another boring granny square blanket. So my idea, having jealously looked and coveted people’s Babette blankets, was to do my own little version. I would do a little patchwork number. (See? Even this wasn't really my idea, just inspired by someone-else's - but this is the closest I'm going to come so I'm claiming it as my own.)

Great idea.

No.

Annoying idea.

Great, but annoying. A lot of time had to go into preparing and assembling this bad boy. I did think about doing squares with just two rounds in, like the Babettes, but I decided I was making life too complicated for myself so stuck to just doing squares with 8 rounds and 4 rounds.

I joined squares together in batches so as to minimize the horror of having to join together a million billion of the buggers and this made life a lot more bearable. I decided I would join the squares together with contrasting bright red wool to make a kind of a feature of the process.

It soon took on a life of its own, as crochet blankets seem to do, and it even made a special journey over to France with me (I crammed and crammed that wool in my suitcase) where I continued my progress and gave it to Jess the dog to model for me.

It’s even come to Liverpool with me and is now on its final stages. I’ve decided to stop with the patchwork and build it up from now on with a border in all the different colours of wool. It won’t be a massive blanket at all, it’s just about the width of a single bed at the moment, but she’s only a wee person and it’ll be big enough to go over her lap or round her shoulders.

I’m more than a little bit proud of it.

And I’ll be even prouder when it’s finished and the realisation that I’ve officially started on my Christmas present list sinks in.