Granny Ripple Blanket great reveal!

I have finally finished my ‘random’ granny ripple blanket.

Here it is. The light here when I had finished it and wanted to take a photograph was absolutely awful but I found that with the bright celing light I now have in the sitting room I managed to get these photographs! and more evenly lit than if I had only used the light from the patio door!

The only slight issue I have with it is the edging.

Now my instincts (or should I say simple maths) made me wonder how a border that inserted four or five stitches every three was going to lay flat but I wanted a border that repeated every three stitches and the picture in the book looked flat and it was a professionally produced pattern so I was confident it would all work out in the end.

But no, it is not completely flat. Of course this is in part down to the way I fudged it round the ripples and the fact that I used four trebles per double row down the sides (though that is the correct number).

Perhaps you can see this here and here. It is almost flat and can be locally flat.

So do I rip it all out and see if changing the way I worked round the ripples and working three wide-topped trebles down the side will give it that perfect flat look or do I leave it?

It never has to lie flat and it isn’t really a problem but I just can’t decide.

Here it is lying on the settee, draped over a chair and here is a ‘selfie’ (I can’t say I like the term) that I took with my tablet.

And just a few statistics

I started the blanket when I came home from the Danube cruise in September so it has only taken a little over four months to complete. Much quicker than earlier blankets but it has been my main project in that time.

I was aiming for 3ft x 6ft but it has turned out more like 3ft 6ins x 7ft. This is more to do with the length than the width since that was the aim before the border.

More than enough yarn for the body

I used sixteen 100g balls of Stylecraft Special DK in the following colours

Plum, Lipstick, Pomegranate, Shrimp, Spice, Saffron, Citron, Spring Green, Meadow, Sage, Aspen, Turquoise, Cloud Blue, Aster, Violet, Wisteria for the body of the blanket.

I repeated each colour set six times which gave 96 double rows. I had enough left over to realise that fourteen balls would have been enough (repeated seven times) but I am using the leftover yarn for a cushion cover.

Not enough for the border

I bought two balls of the same yarn in Silver and Lavender for the border but that was based on a very rough estimate of going round twice with each colour.

After the first round of Silver I decided a row of dcs (US – scs) would make a firmer basis for the edging and so I was not entirely surprised when I ran out a couple of feet before the end of the last Silver row. Luckily I had a small leftover ball from an earlier blanket and could finish with that.

With the Lavender I ran out a couple of inches before the end of the second round and had to buy another ball to finish that and do the final dc round. Though after what happened with the Silver I was not surprised.

I know I blew a bit hot and cold about it during the making but now I love it and there is enough winter left to get in some good snuggling before summer comes.