Halloween Blanket

I wish I was still young enough to trick-or-treat

Greetings folks! I'm back to give the skinny on my latest project!

If any of you read my Red Heart yarn review, then you may remember I mentioned that the reason I took the plunge and bought the yarn was because I wanted to make a blanket for my son. When I wrote my review on the yarn, I was a few squares in to the blanket, and I'm happy to say that having completed the whole thing, I'm still every bit as in love with the yarn as I was then. Phew!

So to get right down in to it, first I'll give you the basics of the blanket design (I'll link the pattern below for anyone who wants to have a crack at it themselves) it's a fairly simple layout - 9 squares and a border around the edges. Obviously there are varying colours and such, I'll get to that further down.

The squares are solid granny squares, and I have to say I really like how these are constructed. Usually in a granny square - solid or traditional - you increase when you get to the corner space where there's a chain2 gap, and into that gap, you put two double crochet, chain two, two double crochet. With this method you always end up with a little gap in the corners, so it's never completely solid.

there ends up being an X shape across your work

However, using the method in this pattern you get a completely solid, and in my opinion, much neater looking square. The difference is that when you get to the last stitch in a side you do two doubles and one treble in that stitch, then one treble and two doubles in the first stitch on the next side, which makes the point in the corner solid, while also increasing the number of stitches in the next round. 

Each round ends with a slip stitch and the next round starts with a chain3 and continues as before, the only thing you need to watch out for is that you don't accidentally skip the slipped stitch when you get to the end of the next round, otherwise that side will be one stitch short. Because of the way each row is almost fastened off before the next one begins, it made changing colours very easy, and the join between the colours is seamless.

The squares worked up quite quickly, I would be able to get a whole one done while I was sitting watching TV in the evening. Once the squares were done, it was time to start the faces.

The many faces of Halloween

As you can see in the picture above, four of the squares have assorted faces, and one says 'Boo!'. The faces were easy enough to make, although I found with some of them there were still a lot of gaps showing between the stitches when they were finished. For example, the triangle eyes and noses were quite 'gap-y' and so were the oval shaped eyes on the second face from the left in the picture above. The instructions tell you to leave a long tail after you fasten off, so I left an extra long tail and used a yarn needle to weave the yarn in and out of the stitches to fill in the gaps.

The 'Boo!' was slightly more difficult, to make. The two letter 'O's were fine, as was the exclamation mark. The 'B' was slightly trickier, and it ended up looking like a number 8. It took a fair amount of manipulating it, when I was stitching it to the square, to get it to look like a 'B'.

Once all the faces were done, it was just a matter of stitching them on to the various squares. One thing I will say is plan carefully when you're putting the face pieces on to the squares - I'll go in to a bit more detail about this further down. I found the easiest way to get the faces right was to lay the square out flat and then pin the pieces down before sewing them on. It would be extremely rare that I'd pin anything in crochet. In fact, I don't think I've ever done it before, however it was the best way to keep all the pieces in the places you want them, because I found that even the piece I was working on tended to move around a lot as I was sewing it - I'd leave the pins in right until I had the whole piece pretty much sewn on.

Never have I been happier to finish seaming a piece together

Next step was sewing all the pieces together. It said on the pattern to sew the pieces together using the back loops only. It didn't specify what sort of stitch to use, so I used a mattress stitch to give as seamless a join as possible. Mattress stitch is a fairly strong stitch - it's also used to sew sleeves and seams in sweaters, so I figured this would be a good robust stitch which would be capable of standing up to a vigorous toddler.

Sewing through the back loops only was a bit of a faff, to be honest. There ended up being a gap where 4 pieces intersected, which I had to go back and sew tighter when the whole thing was completed. The way I put it together was I sewed the top three squares together, then the middle three, and then the bottom three, so that I ended up with three long strips. I then sewed the strips together. 

I mentioned earlier about planning the layout of the faces carefully, the reason I say this is because when you're sewing the pieces together through the back loops, it's hard to weave in tail ends of yarn neatly. When you lay out your face pieces, do it so that when they're sewn on, the yarn tail from the square will be pointing towards the outside of the blanket. Similarly, when you're sewing the pieces together, rotate the multicoloured pieces so that their yarn tail is pointing towards the outside as well. Obviously, you won't be able to do this with the 'BOO!' square, because it's in the centre. The first round of the border is just double crochets, so the yarn tails from the squares can be woven in neatly and securely with those stitches.

Before your boder is on, the blanket should look like some sort of Halloween amoeba 

Once the pieces were sewn together, the border was a piece of cake. The first round was just double crochets using the grey yarn, then the second round was 'shells' using the black yarn. A 'shell' is when you make a single crochet, skip two stitches, put 5 double crochets in the next stitch, skip two stitches, then repeat all the way around.

So there you have it! The Halloween blanket is finished and my little boy is delighted with it. He's been sleeping under it every night since I gave it to him. I think overall it took me about 10 days to finish it. I really like this pattern, and I think it's something that could be adapted quite easily to be used for a different occasion, like Christmas, Valentine's day, etc.

Yarns: RedHeart.com

2 x Red Heart Super Saver #312 Black

2 x Red Heart Super Saver #254 Pumpkin

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #356 Amethyst 

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #400 Grey Heather

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #672 Spring Green

Pattern: Pumpkin Face Throw

Stitch-cation Super Afghan Challenge

Greetings readers! Once again, I have been absent for a while, however I have not been idle, oh no! I've been churning out projects by the barrel-full so I should have plenty of posts coming up with the various things I've made.

Today's post is about my first ever full size crochet afghan/blanket. I made it for the Stitch-cation Challenge on the The Crochet Crowd.com. If you haven't visited their site, I'd really recommend you check them out, it's like a massive community/encyclopedia/educational resource all mashed in to one, and it's AWESOME! They run challenges all the time - you can see details of current and previous challenges on the site - but this is the first one I've actually participated in. 

I started it on the 3rd of July and honestly, I was doubtful I would get it finished in time for the September 1st deadline. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually came together quite quickly, I think that was due to the fact that it's made up of smaller squares so you don't end up with this behemoth of a project where it gets to the point that one row can take almost an hour to do. With some of the squares I would finish a whole one in an evening, while watching TV.

This project consisted of squares, each made of one of the following 10 stitch patterns:

Popcorn Stitch
Back Loops Stitch
Cross Stitch
Double Crochet & Slip Stitch
Front Post Double Around Single Crochet
Front Post Double Crochet
Front Post Treble Crochet
Granny Square
Raised Trebles
Front Post Double Crochet With Shells 

You had to make two of each square. I decided to do one out of each pair in a solid colour, and the other in mixed colours. The rules were that you had to use a minimum of 8 colours, and that your border had to have a minimum of 4 rows. I'll list the colours I used in the blanket at the bottom of this post. The border I made had 9 or 10 rows. The border pattern I used was from the Red Heart Holiday Striped Throw, I just changed the order of the colours so that it would suit the layout I wanted.

The instruction e-book said that the aim of the project was to learn more about how to use different stitch types and I definitely learned lots! In fact there are quite a few of these stitches that I've got in mind for future projects. Getting the hang of the patterns was easier than I thought, and there were the step-by-step YouTube tutorials to fall back on if I got stuck. Probably the most difficult bit of the entire thing was trying to decide the placement of the different squares. I must have done at least 10 different arrangements before I was happy enough to crochet them all together. 

The border did take a while, and was slightly awkward because the blanket was fairly big by that stage. Working on it induced a mild form of heat stroke because it was covering my lap while I crocheted around the edges, although at least I know it's going to be nice and warm when the colder weather rolls around. In fairness, although it was a bit of a slog getting around the whole border, it wasn't as tedious as it could have been because I was so excited that it was getting closer to being finished (although I did almost have a nervous breakdown when I had to rip out nearly an entire round because I messed up) Then FINALLY on the 19th of August, I finished weaving in my ends and........TAH DAH!!

I'm delighted with how it turned out! I love all the different colours and textures, and it definitely has given me a wider range of options for other projects in the future. Not saying I'm going to be starting another one of these blankets next week, but I wouldn't rule it out for the future. A lighter weight yarn and lower gauge hook (this was made with Aran weight yarn and a 5mm hook) would make a smaller blanket that would be great for kids or a new baby.

Here's the list of the colours I used, and where I got them:

Pink: King Cole Bounty Aran Shade 133 (from Springwools)

Purple: King Cole Bounty Aran Shade 117 (from Springwools)

Tan/Wheat: King Cole Bounty Aran Shade 113 (from Springwools)

Baby Blue: Robin Bonny Babe Aran Shade 1877 (from Springwools)

Yellow: Tivoli Eurospun Blockbuster Double Knit Shade 566 (from Springwools)*

Grey: King Cole Comfort Aran Shade 313 (from Springwools)

Green: King Cole Comfort Aran Shade 319 (from Springwools)

Mint: Stylecraft Baby Aran Shade 1234 (from Home Focus at Hickeys)

Cream border colour: Stylecraft Baby Aran Shade 1245 (from Home Focus at Hickeys)

*I'm aware the yellow is actually double knit wool, however it was actually the same thickness as the aran wools I used. The aran version of the Eurospun Blockbuster was more like a chunky weight, and would have been too thick for the project.

Log Cabin Blanket Patch #2

So this is the second patch in the blanket, and I'm pleased with how it's coming along! My son picked out most of the colours in this patch, I think he has good taste. 

One of the things I'm enjoying most about knitting the blanket is that it's made up of individual patches, so you feel like you've accomplished more as each patch is completed, as opposed to when you're knitting one huge piece and it's only towards the end that you start to be able to 'see the finish line' so to speak. 

I've just started patch number three, so hopefully I'll be posting that up here shortly!

Snuggly Baby Blanket

This is a really simple baby blanket I knitted while I was pregnant with my son. At the time I started knitting it, I didn't yet know if he was going to be a boy or a girl, so I went with a multicoloured wool in soft baby colours. 

The pattern was a free one that I found online, but I can't for the life of me remember the site where I got it. It starts out with casting on 5 knit stitches and then you use a yarn over increase every row so you gain one stitch each row. You keep going until the blanket is as wide as you want, and then start to decrease. The yarn-overs on each row make a border around  the blanket, and when you decrease each row, you actually decrease two stitches and still do a yarn over, so your row ends up being one stitch shorter.

The pattern showed a blanket that was blue and white, knitted using two balls of wool at the same time. The wool weight was Double Knitting. As I said, I ended up using two balls of multicoloured wool, which I think gave a nice graduated stripe effect, and the colours would be suitable for either a boy or a girl.

I made this blanket to be moses basket/pram size, which was about 160 stitches by 160 rows or thereabouts. In total I used four balls of wool to make it. Basically, I knitted increasing until I got to the end of the first two balls, then I started the decreasing. The number of wool balls you need will vary depending on the meterage of the wool. The link at the bottom shows the wool I used. I also used 4mm x 150cm circular needles. 

I think overall it took me about a three weeks to knit this, however I was working full time so could only knit for an hour or so in the evenings and then longer on weekends. It's definitely a nice straightforward project, and the best part about it is that the size of the piece is completely up to you. The pattern can be used for anything from a dish scrubbie to a king size bedspread!

The pattern goes like this:

(k = knit, yo = yarn over, k2tog = knit two together)

Cast on 5 stitches

1st row: k3, yo, k2

2nd row: k3, yo, k3

3rd row: k3, yo, k4..... 

4th row: k3, yo, k to end of row. Continue until desired width is achieved.

To decrease: k2, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k to end of row. Continue until there are 5 stitches left on your needle.

Cast off

Wool from: Go Woolly - Cygnet Kiddies Couture Prints DK

Needles from: Amazon 

Log Cabin Blanket Patch #1

I started knitting this about a week ago and it's moving along nicely. It's all knit stitches (no purling or increases! yay!) so it's a nice one to do to relax because all you have to do is count the rows as you go. I'm using all acrylic wool, I think I've got a selection of about 20 colours in all. They're various colours from Hayfield Bonus, Pricewise and Big Value, seeing as I wanted to keep the price down and not skimp on the quality. I think the most expensive ball of wool was about €2.99. They're all Double Knitting weight and I'm using 4.5mm metal circular needles (cable length 60cm).

Pattern from: Very Pink.com

Wool and supplies from: Springwools