The Allsorts Blanket is PUBLISHED !!!!!!

 After a lot of time and effort - plus some fabulous tech editing and testing - 

The Allsorts Blanket

 is finally published today!!!! (That's a clickable link too, or click the photo below!)

It's only on Ravelry so far, although I will probably add it to Lovecrafts as well when I have time.

This is the fully written and updated version of the Tooty Stripey Blanket, with computer generated charts and plenty of photos to help you along the way.

You can make it any size you like, in any thickness yarn and in as many or as few colours as your heart desires!!

For the new sample, I used 7 pastel rainbow shades, plus cream but it would also look good in a host of vibrant colours. Or go minimal with just 3 shades perhaps??

I designed and wrote the pattern with the relatively new crocheter in mind. An opportunity to learn one or two new techniques and stitches; practise calculating your stitch count from a tension square; play with your colours to get a satisfactory repeat; straighten wonky edges with steam blocking; add a simple border, or even a fancy one.

And if you are unfamiliar with charts and how to read them, then have the written instructions and the chart side by side as you work. Read the instructions and then look at the charts - can you see the same stitches there, in the places where you will work them?? With just a little practise, the chart will begin to make sense.

One of my testers did just that and this is what she said - 

Best compliment EVER!!!

This design has been on quite a journey over the years. It started with 'Emma's Blanket' way back in early 2013. Inspired by Little Woollie who was making a mixed stripey blanket and writing up the pattern on her blog as she went - I needed it finished in a hurry though and couldn't wait for her, so very (Very!) quickly went completely freestyle and designed my own blanket. 

Years later, in 2017, I made another blanket on a similar theme but this time it had lots more texture and was also designed to be reversible. Due to the colours I used it came to be called The Tooty Stripey Blanket. (It has it's own page dedicated to it if you'd like to read more? It's up at the top of the page there.)

The Tooty Stripey was only a hand drawn chart when I published the pattern. I always meant to go back and write up the written instructions but never found the time. Not until lockdown came along that is!! I have an office job so was able to work from home for the whole of lockdown but without wasting time commuting every day, I managed to make a start and keep going back and adding and tweaking and re-writing.... until finally it was ready to show to someone else!

I got in touch with some ladies on instagram and they did a wonderful job of finding every single typo, missed space, missed stitch - just everything!! Fellow crafters are the best!!

Finally, last night, I made the last amendment - and was then up early this morning for a final check over before publishing!!!

Woo Hoo!!!!

You know, it only dawned on me last night that I haven't taken any full length photos of the blanket, only close-ups - my favourite being the flat lay at the top of the screen. Want to see some more close-ups?... Although I may have shared these before....

I warn you though, when you make your own blanket, be ready to stitch in all the ends!

There are lots and lots (and lots!) of ends....

Click the link at the top of this page, or click HERE, to hop across to Ravelry to buy your copy. There's no need to be a member as your pattern will be emailed to you. And please do share some photos of it as you make it and once finished and add the hastag #theallsortsblanket so I can see it too!!! I LOVE to see what others have made from my designs!! I still get a thrill knowing someone used my pattern and I don't think that feeling will ever wear out!

HAPPY HOOKING!!  TINA xXx

Coming along nicely

I'm not rushing with writing  up the pattern for  my Allsorts Blanket- it's taken me 3 years to properly start, so I might as well take my time and get it right! 

The centre panel was finished and  then I started trying out different borders. Nothing too flashy this time  - it's a busy blanket and I don't want the border to detract from it. My original version had a multicolored border but I realise now it was probably a bit much. But it was as much to do with not having enough yarn in one colour and I didn't want to buy another ball.

So I've gone for a very simple border  that's similar to  the original. Along the  way  though, I've been trialling some different edgings too and taking pics of each. After all,  you might not want a simple border. 

Would you like to see? 

This first one is rows of trebles, topped with the flower pattern from the blanket  - but strictly speaking, it isn't reversible as an edging. 

Then I tried same treble rows topped with moss stitch. You may need to go up a hook size for the moss stitch though  - at least I do!

Try trebles followed by a row of dc+ch 1 in every stitch -

Or how about post stitches? This is pink posts on one side and cream on the other. 

You could even add pompoms! 

This next one is made from two rows of dtr 'bobbles' worked in the same colour, so you get bobbles on both sides. 

As mentioned though, my pattern sample, has been finished much like the original, with rows of granny stitches and a contrast edging but this time with one colour and a contrast edge. 

The finished pattern is a little way off yet. I need to take some photos to go with the instructions  - then go back to drawing the chart.... then join all the different sections together into a cohesive pattern...

So watch this space. Still...

The Tooty Stripey Blanket finally gets written up!!!

There is now a fully written pattern of this blanket, with full charts, plenty of photos and loads of information, called 

The Allsorts Blanket 

- available on Ravelry.

Who recognises this photo?? This is the stripey blanket I made for a friend's little girl when I was still learning how to crochet, way back in Dec'12 - Jan'13. 

I had a (birthday) deadline, so it was made very quickly, with no notes written - why would I  need notes??

 I created a project page on Ravelry and shared pics on Pinterest, including this one (I used to spend a lot of time on Pinterest back then). I haven't checked recently but I know at one point it had been re-pinned nearly 50,000 times!!

A blanket that was that popular deserved a written pattern surely? So in 2017, when the craft shop I used to have a part time job in, started selling yarn I decided to buy a selection of baby colours and make a new version of Emma's Blanket. And by that time not only had I learned some more stitches - I and discovered TEXTURE!

I set to making a new blanket, designing as I went, trying to write notes along the way but quickly gave that up as the blanket grew just too fast to keep up! Once it was finished, I painstakingly drew a chart detailing every row and so a new blanket was born - the Tooty Stripey Blanket! 

I published the chart on Ravelry in July 2017 and watched it quickly take flight - this  assisted by several free pattern sites that picked it up, and kindly advertised it for me for free!!

It doesn't seem possible that 3 years have passed since that design stage. I've now made several versions myself in different sizes and colours and it has become my signature blanket. And the free chart has been downloaded from Ravelry 17,500 times!!!

Back in mid-April and after much soul searching, I decided to add a very small fee to the pattern (I described it as a 'buy me a coffee' fee), along with a coupon code so customers could sill have it for free if they preferred. 

Several people over those years have said I should have charged for it from the start but it was my first pattern - and just a hand drawn chart at that - but you know I just didn't think it was good enough (or had the confidence!) to charge a fee. 

But then I released my Hope Springs Hat during lockdown. I had already decided to offer it for free during lockdown with a coupon code but I found a very small number of people were paying for it. I thought at first that I hadn't set the coupon code up properly but then a couple of  those people got in touch to say thank you for the freebie but they could afford to buy the pattern and wanted to support my design efforts by paying for it. Hence the soul searching with my blanket. 

Maybe some of those 17,500 people would have been prepared to pay a little for it... So I added a price that meant after all the fees from Paypal & Ravelry are deducted, I would be left with an average of £1 per copy. And I made it as clear as I could that it could still be downloaded for free with a coupon code.

And you know what, a few people have chosen to pay for it - if you're one of them, THANK YOU!!!

Those few sales have spurred me on to write up the pattern in full, pulling together all the other detail from it's blog page, re-writing, occasionally correcting and adding all the extra info I can think of. Hopefully, there will be photos of different stages and if I can manage it, a new computer generated chart, rather than hand drawn (eek!!).

Writing a pattern means testing it as I go by making  a new blanket but there was a problem. Lockdown had not been lifted and the wool shops were not open. I know I could have ordered all the yarn I wanted online but it's just not the same as choosing colours in person. So I kept writing and refining, a bit of testing with some scrap yarn but I felt desperate to buy a nice collection of colours and get cracking with it!!!!!!

Finally, in mid-June I heard Hobbycraft was opening! I went mid-afternoon, hoping the long queue would have happened first thing and I would only have to wait 10 minutes. But no, I waited for an hour and a half!!! Yes, a full HOUR & a HALF. This was entirely due to someone's decision to only allow 19 customers in store at a time. It's a huge warehouse but just 19 people at a time?... But I was desperate, so I waited patiently. And once I was in I wasn't leaving without a big bag of yarn, so I really took my time choosing colours!!!

Now they don't have the best range - they're not a yarn shop after all. So I came home with a big bag of 12 balls of wool - which received admiring glances from those still in the queue.!!

I took a photo of said bag, posed on the very first Tooty Stripey Blanket I had made, which used colours that reminded me of the Tooty Fruity Sweets that inspired the (ridiculous) name. And guess what??

I'd chosen new colours that looked just like the originals!! I had even bought a variegated ball!! That was definitely NOT my intention as I had hoped for a nice balance of summery colours. But I suppose you have to go with what you can get...

 

After getting over my initial annoyance, I made a start on planning a colour repeat. I made some little bobbins of each colour, with 2 each of the paler colours and just one of each bright colour - a total of twenty for my colour repeat.

I ummed and aahed for quite some time, moving them around and taking lots of pics. I added a golden yellow from my stash and a magenta. Still I wasn't quite happy though.

Finally, I decided to toss out the brighter colours you can see in this pic  and went with just the eight pastel rainbow colours that remained. 

Pity they didn't have any lilac ...

That would make the new blanket sample look even closer to the original but by then I had decided it was actually quite fitting to completely revisit the original. 

And don't worry about the colours I tossed out - I already have a project in mind for them!!

During the weeks without fresh yarn, as I said,  I had been refining and tweaking the original design, adding some extra texture rows so that they really do hop from side to side at regular intervals and taking out a couple of bits I wasn't so keen on.

Once I had yarn and started hooking, things progressed reasonable smoothly. However, there were some hiccups along the way... 

I knew I should trust my own pattern, having spent so much time and effort getting it just right. But I just couldn't help trying to tweak-as-i-go... although most of those attempts ended up with a whole lot of ripping back and doing what the pattern said - including one section that had 13 rows!!!

 

Once the main body of the blanket was completed, I  started stitching in all the ends, ready to start on the border. I considered stitching in as I went but as this was my working sample - and I kept tweaking then ripping out - I thought it wise to leave them all until the end. Once they were all done it had a little photo-shoot and will get a light blocking to properly straighten the edges, before adding the border.

But it's going well so far. Very well actually. I have a BIG smile as I look at this photo -

I've also thought long and hard about what name to give this new, fresh version of the #tootystripeyblanket . As It will be a paid pattern on Ravelry, it can't have the same name as another pattern I sell. I also want to distinguish between the chart only version and the fully written. So a new name was needed and it dawned on me that there really was only one name that would fit. 

May I introduce my signature blanket, The Allsorts Blanket!!

Shame I didn't think of it 3 years ago when I settled on tooty stripey...

There's still quite a way to go before I can publish the pattern, not the least of which will be drawing the new chart... But it will be announced here, as well as over on Instagram. And probably fb too....

Watch this space, as they say!!  Bye for now, T xx

Tooty Stripey Ta - dah !! (Also known as blanket spam...)

There is now a fully written pattern of this blanket, with full charts, plenty of photos and loads of information, called 

The Allsorts Blanket 

- available on Ravelry.

My Tooty Stripey Blanket is now washed, dried and the ends trimmed off. Then it had a little photo shoot and I spent ages going through the photos deciding what to use. Then I thought,what the heck, just go overboard and use loads!! So sit back and enjoy some real blanket spam!!

I could go on but that's enough for now isn't it?? No?? How about a few more pics of the Tooty Fruity Blanket??

Enough, enough, I hear you cry!!! Apologies if they really slowed down your pc but I do like a good photo.

And I am working on the tooty pattern but it may take a couple of weeks. Or maybe more....

Til next time,  T   xXx

Emma's Stripey Blanket

EDIT:  I have now made another stripey blanket on a similar theme to this one but it's fully reversible, with more texture and there's a Pattern! 

It is fully written, has full computerised charts, plenty of photos and loads and loads of information. It's called 

The Allsorts Blanket 

- and is available on Ravelry. (That’s a clickable link.)

I asked Emma's Mum if I could borrow the Stripey Blanket I made for her just over 4 years ago now. It seems like such a long time ago now, it was her 4th birthday and now she's eight... (edit: she's just turned 12!!)



It's had an incredible number of views not only on Ravelry (over 17,ooo so far) but also on Pinterest (50,000+ re-pins of one single image). And that's just the ones I know of!!


I've had a few lovely complimentary comments on Ravelry and some people have emailed requesting a pattern. I politely point out that I never followed / wrote a pattern, I really did make it up as I went along. I had been inspired by Julie of Little Woolly and I send them a link to take a look as Julie did write an excellent pattern. I needed to make Emma's blanket in a hurry as it was planned as a birthday present, so I couldn't wait for Julie's pattern updates.


I had another pattern request last month and I had thought perhaps I would find time over Easter to write out a pattern of sorts, should anyone want to try and make their own blanket. But I spent my time on making my new stripey blanket instead... Sorry...


The pattern I had planned on writing was actually going to be more a simple list of which stitch and colour I used on each row. I couldn't crochet very well when I made the blanket and it was a learning curve for me - indeed, my current blanket is another learning curve! I knew I wouldn't be able to write a pattern that a complete beginner could follow - you would have to already be able to crochet and have an idea about how to keep your edges straight. But like I say, I didn't find the time. Maybe this weekend coming?... No, don't be silly Tina, you'll be busy trying to finish the latest blanket!!


But I will try and write it up "one day". For the time being I thought perhaps a photo merge thingy with a tape measure laid along it for scale so you can have a good look at it for yourself. I wonder which Russian website it will appear on first? I wouldn't mind but they never link back to me...


Maybe I should have done the photo merge as two pics not one but it was rather fun making it! And I've put my name on it this time!!


The new blanket is growing fast and despite my best intentions of writing the pattern as I went along, I managed about 10 rows before I could no longer resist cracking on and going with the flow! It looks good though. At least I think so.


All the photos are currently on my phone and I'm having a spot of bother downloading them other than by bluetooth. And there are a lot of photos! I've tried to take a photo of every row as it's added, plus a few extra for good measure. When I get them downloaded I'll hit you with some real blanket spam!! And I will write a pattern of sorts to go with it, even if it is only a list of stitches and colours. You can follow that can't you? Of course you can.

That's it for today - things to do and stitches to hook!!

See you again soon - T  xXx