I’ve been a tad rubbish this year writing about all things crafty. That’s partly because I just haven’t had much time to be crafty this year, but also because when I have had the time I’ve been actually crafting instead. Instagram has also become my go to place for tracking my progress with big projects, and that’s exactly what I’m doing with the second Spice of Life blanket that I’m currently working on. I’ve just found that when you’re working on something that takes weeks or months a series of blog posts as you go isn’t always the most riveting read.
What I am going to shout about here though are the finished projects and there’s one huge one that I’ve been keeping to myself for far too long.
I started the Attic24 ripple blanket what feels like a lifetime ago. It was my first ever big crochet project and it was something that I’d been meaning to do for months and months after seeing how beautiful they looked on Lucy’s blog. I was also determined that this was a project that I was actually going to finish one day rather than put it down halfway through and never pick it up again.
It may have taken months, literally, but it was therefore with rather huge fanfare that I managed to meet my goal of finishing it before the end of 2015. Even if it was at 11.45 that night! The fact that I’m now here finally writing about it at the end of April 2016 tells you just how far behind I am with my blogging to do list at the moment…
The finished blanket is huge – it happily covers up most of the top of our king sized bed! It’s also wonderfully warm to be underneath and the colourful stripes don’t fail to cheer me up on the dullest of days.
Now, as much as it is a physically huge project, I’m pleased to say that it wasn’t actually all that difficult to do. The whole ripple pattern is based around treble stitches and it’s a repeating pattern where you do four normal trebles, two lots of two trebles into one space, four normal trebles, and then two lots of special trebles that join together two spaces into one. This is what forms the ripple and each row is simply a repeat of that. Once you’re finished with all 80 odd rows you add a border which helps to fill in around the first and last rows of ripples to make the edges straight.
The bit where I think I came a bit unstuck was actually with the starting chain and set up row. It being my first big project I’m not sure I quite got that bit right and so I don’t think all my rows lined up as nicely as they possibly should have done. It’s not the end of the world though and hopefully something I can learn from moving forwards with future projects.
What a big project like this has given me though is lots and lots of practice and helped me master my crochet tension. Whilst the first sections where a little loose I think I’m now in a position where I can be consistent with my tension, and that has really helped when I came along to do the Spice of Life blankets.
I am also now very very firmly bitten by the crochet bug. I feel I should possibly be picking my knitting needles up again, or doing more sewing, but something keeps drawing me back to crochet, and in particular the feeling of satisfaction of making crochet blankets. They’re utterly gorgeous to look at, but practical too. There’s always a pile of blankets on our sofa and they’re used every day by either myself or the kids to snuggle under. Snuggling up under my ripple blanket on our recent camping trip not only helped keep me warm on a freezing night, but also made me feel incredibly happy too. If that’s not a good reason for keeping going with my hooky obsession then I don’t know what is!
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