Accidental Blanket

Hello. Today I'm having a Ta-daa post, but first I must say 'WOW!' Have you been and looked at our 20 Minuters Flickr page ? There are lots of fantastic craft items awaiting your perusal; and to think it's only the end of February! All those little snatched 20 minutes are really making a difference to lots of you.

If you're on my list ( and there are over 50 of us now) check your photo folders and see what needs uploading. I think I might have to check mine at the end of every month as all these project photos soon stack up and you forget how much you have actually done.

Now when I say 'finished' I mean all the good, hooky, colourful, exciting bit is finished. There is just the small matter of stitching in all those loose ends. (pouty lip, glum face.)

I do try and work over my ends as I go, but I found out with my last granny square blanket that if your tension is a little loose, they work their way out again. Which is extremely annoying! So unfortunately there is nothing for it but to sew them in - very tightly!

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This blanket started life quite accidentally (hence its name) when I taught a friend to crochet. Well, once you get some yarn and a hook out, that's it, you can't stop! So while my friend was getting to grips with granny squares I started playing around with joining-squares-as-you-go (inspired by Lucy). This, I have to say is most satisfying as your work looks finishes before you've really done much! Does that make sense?

Anyhow most of the centre join-as-you-go-squares were made last August in the car on the 4hour journey to my brothers house. I'm a great devotee of car crochet as I'm the worst passenger in the world and find hooking prevents me peering out of the window and panicking that the wheels of those huge lorries in the next lane are going to squish us.
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Then I went around and around creating some scrummy stripes in varying patterns. Some in double crochet, some in trebles, some in single stitches and some in groups.

Now going around and around is mighty fine but it does take longer and longer the bigger your blanket gets, so that's when I decided to hop back to my join-as-you-go squares, creating a single border of them. Then I did a few more rounds to mirror the stripes before the squares.

The blanket then spent a long time folded up on the back of a rocking chair awaiting some inspiration. What did it need next? More stripes? More squares? Hmmm...

I finally decided that the reason I couldn't decide what to do next was because it didn't need anything else apart from a very simple neat little picot edge.

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TA-DAA!

I'm really pleased with my accidental blanket. It's made from all the left over wool from my granny blanket (I obviously bought twice as much yarn as I really needed) and it's crocheted on a smaller hook making it denser and not as loose. But now my crochet project is finished I feel a little bereft. I doesn't feel right not having a little basket of woolly goodness stashed at the side of the sofa!

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Soooo.....I've started something new. Something a bit pointy and dangley and all my own design!

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Till next time, don't forget to go and upload some photos.

Love Fi x