Cosy Blanket

As soon as I saw Lucy’s colour scheme for her latest blanket, which she previewed on Ravelry back in October, I was besotted. I adored the colours (yes, I’m always a sucker for autumnal colours) and knew that I wanted to make this blanket for myself. As soon as the packs were available on Wool Warehouse, I ordered two of them, even though I knew I had to finish Ewan’s Coastal Blanket first; I wanted a huge Cosy Blanket! I was a model of restraint. I was dying to get started on this when Lucy started publishing the pattern and her colour sequences. Instead, I plugged away at Ewan’s blanket and occasionally gazed longingly at the new balls of wool that were calling to me.

Cosy Blanket Border

When I finally got started on my Cosy Blanket, I decided to do a ripple. I love the ripple pattern, so soothing to work. But then, after 3 stripes, I thought about the other ripple I needed to finish. And I’d just finished Ewan’s Coastal ripple. I thought about just following Lucy’s new pattern, but realised that I was a little fed up of stripes. I wanted something different, but I didn’t know what. I started scouring the patterns I’ve saved on Ravelry (and there’s a lot!) and came across a pattern for a Giant Granny Square. The pattern used only 6 colours, but there were lots of rounds and no reason at all that I couldn’t use 15 colours in one square. Yes, that did feel a little mad!

Cosy Blanket – side

I decided to make 12 squares. Lucy was likely to publish 6 sequences so I decided to work one square in her sequence and 1 with the sequence reversed to get my 12 squares. I really enjoyed making the squares. Each one felt like an adventure! I had no idea what they were going to look like and as I finished each one, I ploughed straight ahead with the next one. They were gorgous! For some reason, I had expected each pair of squares to look similar, but they didn’t at all. When I had 7 squares, I laid them out on my bed to get an idea of the finished size and realised that 9 squares would make a good-sized blanket, although perhaps a little shy of the width I wanted.

I dithered for a whole day between 9 squares or 12 squares (while I crocheted square 8). Then I realised that for 9 squares, I would have used 5 of Lucy’s colour sequences. Why not use the 6th for the border and do a border using the same pattern as the squares and all 15 colours? This would give me a lovely deep border (about 10″) and give me that extra width I wanted. I really like the idea of putting all my squares in one huge square, too. So that’s what I did.

I have to say that working that border almost killed me. In terms of stitches, that border equates to 3 squares – no more than I’d originally intended to do anyway. In reality, those rounds feel really long, and get longer with every round. Plus there’s the logistics of just wrestling with the damned thing as you work your way around it. My outer square was supposed to end with 2 rounds of trebles in Claret but I only did 1. I was losing the will to live by this point! Lucy published her border, which I loved, but was an additional 4 rounds and the thought of it made me want to cry. So I cheated! It was the last 2 rounds of her border that I particularly liked, so I just did those. I’m glad I did put those last 2 rounds on. They really give it a finished look.

I have to say, that I love my finished blanket. I’m absolutely thrilled with it. I keep stroking it and it makes me smile with pleasure every time I look at it 🙂