Baby Blanket Revealed!

Baby Blanket No 1!

I have been addicted to this hooky lark now since 2011, after a friend kindly showed me how to make a jam jar cover to adorn the top of a jar of homemade strawberry jam! Since then I have been hopelessly 'hooked'!! In that time, I have completed a number of projects and used a whole host of different types of wool, stitches, hook sizes and colours. It was only recently that I finally embarked on my first 'big' project, which I suppose was prompted by the news that I was expecting my second baby. I felt inspired to create something practical, long lasting and above all, utterly scrumptious. I decided on a blanket. But this had to be special, it had to be colourful, snuggly, eye catching and also neutral, as this bump is still 'team yellow' and will remain so until the 'big day'!! 

After some considerable time, searching for blankets I liked and colours that attracted, I finally settled on a pattern by Priscilla Hewitt called sunburst granny square. 

I loved the use of the puff stitch used when making the circle's, it added gentle 'puffs' and formed raised ovals which I loved and made the granny squares more dense and added a thicker texture. Also the final round, using the cream wool, used a combination of double trebles, trebles and half trebles, so that the final square was more 'square' shaped, if that makes any sense? 

Finally, I decided on what wool I wanted to use, and loved working with the Rooster Almerino DK. I had used this wool before and always thought it would make a lovely blanket. As wools go, it's a little pricey, but this was going to be a special blanket, so the cost wasn't something I wanted to worry about (not that my husband was going to let me forget!!) The colours I chose were 'Starfish', 'Beach', 'Ocean', 'Strawberry Cream', Gooseberry', 'Custard' and finally for the outer edge, 'Cornish'. I probably used 2 x 50g balls of each of the coloured wool and 8 balls of the Cornish. I have a left over stash in each colour in varying amounts, depending on which colours I favoured most. I used a size 4mm hook. 

And so off I set. It was such a lovely pattern to use, the repetitive stitches being almost hypnotic, it certainly was soothing to do. I began with only doing the first 3 rounds, building an ever increasing stack of luscious circles, until I had eventually amassed 99 of them,  I had decided that I wanted to do 9 rows of 11. 

I then added the final round once all the circles were completed. I had decided to stitch the squares together at the end, instead of using the 'joining as you go' technique, as on this occasion, I wanted to lay the squares out first and re-arrange them as I felt fit, making sure not too many of the same colours were clumped together. In theory, this probably took me longer to complete and certainly used a lot more wool. Maybe in future I will be more confident.

With a final flourish of a border to help frame my blanket, I completed my first baby blanket. It felt sad to no longer have the pleasure of working on it, but gave me great satisfaction to see it finished. I do admit that yesterday evening, while watching a film, laid out on the sofa, I did throw it over me (you know, to get a feel for it!!) and boy was it warm and quite heavy, maybe not the most ideal blanket for a summer baby, but, my word it was snuggly, I defy any baby not to sleep peacefully wrapped up inside this blanket (or maybe that's just wishful thinking!)

I thought as a tribute to my beautiful blanket, it should be toasted with it's own montage, I feel it certainly deserves it. It has been and truly is everything I set out for it to be and more. I await the day (with some trepidation) when it will be used to welcome home our newest addition to our family! Until then I'm going to find a safe place to tuck it away, as quite honestly I can't trust myself not to start using it as my own personal blanket to warm my habitually ice cold feet on an evening!!

Thank you for visiting and I hope to return shortly xx