As one blanket ends, another begins ...

Just a quick hello today to show you the finished Tooty Fruity blanket. It's been washed and blocked and feels lovely and soft, with a nice drape to it. The sun was very bright when I took the photo below, so I had to try and stay in the shade but I still had to adjust the photo so the colours didn't look washed out.

And here's one pegged on the line - for photographic purposes only - I dried it flat on the floor.

 It measures 25" x 30" which is a nice size for a pram blanket I think. I must take some close ups later and come back and add them. I do like a good close up!!

And now it's onto the next blanket - the "mixed stripey" blanket. As I mentioned before, I bought a few more colours to add to the mix and had meant to do a bit of planning before I started but apart from planning the border first I basically jumped straight in!! Just one photo today - all the others are on my phone and it won't play ball and connect to the laptop today except by bluetooth.

This was a little try out of the border pattern. As I mentioned before, I want the blanket to be completely reversible in that there will be no obvious front and back - it will look as good from one side as the other. Now for the border, I decided to work granny rows using all ten colours with 2 colours per row. This meant I had to carry the none working colour across the back without it showing. With a bit of trial and error I did work it out and the tangle above did get unravelled.
I've already done about 30 rows and have taken a photo as most have been added, although I did forget at the beginning. Although I'm not up to being able to write a proper tutorial that even a beginner could follow, there will be enough that you could follow along if you can already crochet.

I must admit, I am in awe of the amazing people who are able to write very clear instructions on what to do and how, with lots of pics of exactly where to put your hook at every step. Tutorials take a huge amount of time and planning, as well as skill, so I will simply be telling you which stitch I used and supplying plenty of links to the lovely people who can teach you how.
(Whilst the blanket is entirely my own design, there will be snippets here and there which have been inspired by my favourite bloggers but I'll tell you when that happens.)

I'm pretty much making it up as I go - my preferred method of working! - although I have asked to borrow the Stripey Blanket I made for my friend's little girl to remind me of some stitch combinations I used before. Looking back at the photos there were a lot of rows that were just trebles but in different colours. That was way back in the early days of my crochet "adventure" when I didn't know many stitches. This one will be quite different! I just hope the colour combos won't be too gaudy.... There's no white to calm them down!

That's it for today. Things to do and crochet to be done - and photographed!! I'll leave you with a photo from Micheldever Woods taken on Saturday (which the weathermen said would be the best day of the weekend - they lied...). I think we were too early for the main crop of bluebells though - there were still a million buds waiting to open, so I'll have to go again in a couple of weeks.

Till next time,  T  xXx