Refuge blanket

I made a hair band for a friend in the Facebook pay-it-forward craft thingy. I made three crochet flowers like the first crochet flower I made (see post of 26 June 2012) and attached them to an i-cord band. Unfortunately the only photo I have is really rather rubbish, so you'll just have to imagine it.

I also made another hat for another friend in the same Facebook thingy, using Woolly Wormhead's Ruislip pattern, which I used for the Valentine hat I made for a swap (see post of 29 March 2013) but as it is identical, there is not much point in putting a photo here.

However, I did say back in my post about mitred squares (see post of 16 March 2014) that I had incorporated them into the last of our blankets for Refuge, so here is the finished item. I crocheted the blanket together and made a few other of the squares in addition to the multi-coloured mitred squares (the brown and cream diagonal one is one of mine). The rest were knitted/crocheted by DD, DM and various other members of the Croydon Knitting Group. I had hoped that someone else would offer to put together squares for future blankets, as I would be happy to do some more squares, but feel I have 'done my bit' as far as putting them together is concerned. It hasn't happened as yet...

Thankie Blankie

 Just realised I said I would put up a photo of the finished item.  Have obtained permission from Franney to do this.  She kindly put it all together and this is the result:

My squares can be seen at row 4 column 2 and row 1 column 4.  DD's are at row 1 column 3 and row 3 column 4. As can be seen from the detail photo on the right Franney beautifully crocheted it all together with a multi-coloured yarn she had no other use for.  Josie, who collected the yarn in the first place, took the blanket to the lady's daughter and was told the lady had now had to go into a home, thanked us and said she would take the blanket to her soon.

Still here!

Just realised it's over a month since I posted to this blog.  This is partly because I don't want to do too many blogs without photos, as I think photos make posts more interesting, and partly because I don't want to put progress photos on here and haven't finished anything much lately.    I have three works in progress currently: a short-sleeved cardigan for myself, a pair of socks for DD and another baby cardi for SCBU.

The only recently finished objects are these two squares.  The story behind them is this:

At a recent knitting group meeting, a staff member of the pub we were in came up to us and said she had had a phone call from a lady who had some yarn she wanted rid of and if we were interested, we should phone back.  The lady had been a prolific knitter, but was now too ill to knit any more and unlikely to be able to ever again, so wanted her stash to go to anyone who would be able to make use of it.  One of our members went and collected the yarn and other stuff - about three large bin bags - and various people took yarn, etc at a swap and buy session we had a few days later.  (There's still quite a bit left taking up the member's house room!).  We decided it would be nice to express our thanks.  She said she didn't want anything for the yarn, just to know it had gone to a good home or homes, but we decided to give her a voucher and knit her a small lap blanket, mostly from her own yarn.  These two squares were my contribution, made from yarn from the lady's stash.  If I get a chance, I will post a photo of the completed article (assuming I get to see it before it's given to her). 

A rather sad story, but nice that some good will come of her stash at least and it won't just get chucked when she passes on.  I have taken quite a bit of acrylic DK for making blankets for SCBU.  Not sure what other people will do with what they have taken.

Baby Stuff - Blankets

Firstly, a couple of Tunisian crochet blankets.  The one on the left was made over 24 years ago.  I purchased the yarn from a yarn shop near the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields and made this blanket for use in the Moses basket and car seat for my daughter.  It was also of course later used for my son.  The photo is a little small to see the detail, but the yarn is mostly white with threads of different colours spun in with.  I decided it needed an edging and did two rows of crochet doubles round three edges, but probably did a few too many, as it seems to have gone a bit curly and misshapen.  The ribbon at the end was from my wedding dress.  My wedding dress had a white ribbon band around the waist with a bow sewn on as an afterthought, or so I felt, so I removed the bow and some of that got used for this blanket.

In with the same charity shop bag of yarn that the fluffy scarf yarn came in, was 100 g of multi colour acrylic double knit, which, although not the same, kind of reminded me of the blanket I had made 20 or so years previously so I started making a blanket in the same style, but part way through remembered that the first one had taken 200g, so this one probably would too, so then bought 100g of plain white acrylic DK to fill in with. Then, having just learned how to do applied I-cord, I did an edging with this - not sure if you can see from the photo, but I did the edging multi-colour on the white bits and vice versa. 

These above two blankets are for keeping, potentially for my grandchildren, should they ever arrive.  (Not hurrying my offspring, though).

Now onto ones I have done for SCBU.  I decided that, at least until I have been paid a month or two in my new job (finally got one starting end May) I am not spending any money on stuff for SCBU, so the following blankets have been made from stash and/or donations from knitting group friends.

Hang on, that first one's just a border.  Yes, when I first went to offer my services, the lady I spoke to gave me a blanket to take away to give me an idea of size, but said it was really a bit smaller than they wanted, so my blankets should be a bit bigger, so I thought if that one was not much use to them as it was, it would make sense to do the small job of making a border for it first, so I could take that back fairly quickly to check it was now the right size, having first measured it, which I did and it was, so I then had a size to work to and they had a usable blanket more quickly than if I had made a whole one straight off.

The pink diamond patterned blanket was modified from a pattern for a larger, pram blanket, but the other two are entirely my own design.  If you would like to know more about how I did them, you could look at my projects on Ravelry.com (details in the about me bit above) or leave a comment asking me, as detailing all this in full might make for a rather tedious post.

I do have some more yarn available for blankets - in fact, having decided not to spend any money on SCBU blankets, I then bought a couple of ridiculously cheap batches of yarn on ebay and have decided some of that will become at least one blanket (so much for resolutions...) - but I'm just finishing off another blue cardigan for them, then I'm going to do a white baby cardigan for the lady who has been good enough to go on maternity leave so I can have her job for at least nine months.  I also have some things I want to do for myself...