Sacred Space – part 9 “Finished!”

Well the blanket is finally finished. Taken much longer than I expected due to ill health but really pleased with it.

It would have been good if the weather had been better for taking pictures but not wanting to risk having to wait a few weeks to take that final photograph, I have done the best I could. The only place I can take a decent photograph is only just big enough anyway. (Wrote that yesterday and weather better today but picture no better!)

I did make one enforced change to my original plan for this part. When I looked at how much Sherbet I had left, I realised that if I wanted to follow the drift of the original pattern and use what I think of as the ‘background’ colour (Cream for the original but Sherbet for mine) then I was going to have to buy another ball. However I could see that I had enough of the Spearmint left, so using that instead of the Sherbet would serve a double purpose of not having to go out and buy more and also leaving less yarn over at the end. The colours are very similar to it wouldn’t even change the feel of the blanket very much.

A couple of comments about part 9.

Those corner stitches that I mention in the last post continued int part 9.I really like the thick ribbed texture they create but am less happy about them for a corner as they tended to create a rather pointy corner, rather than one at right angles. I tried to pull them into shape but did not feel I was totally successful.

I found the ‘knot’ stitches (shown here in cream) were quite tricky.

Even when I had worked out to make them satisfactorily I found it hard to keep them all the same size and found myself often having to undo a few because I found that I had made one outside the tolerance that I was allowing myself, as to size, sometimes too big and sometime too small.

I have really enjoyed making this blanket but I was a bit disappointed to find that the edge was so loose compared to the rest of the blanket and hard to get to lie flat. I am tempted, since I think I have enough of the Cornish Blue left, to add a row of simple dcs (US-scs) to the edge, in the hope that that at least makes the last row firm.

It was suggested that we should take the blanket to ‘our sacred space’ to photograph it. Well even if I had ‘A’ sacred space with the weather the way it is this would be difficult but I have draped it over my settee and bed just to give a different look.

So Settee

And bed

Not sure yet how I will use it.

The blanket is in the region of 4ft 6ins made with a 5mm hook, as I did, and Stylecraft Special DK acrylic yarn.

For anyone who is interested here are my colour choices by part and rounds/rows. I have listed them continuously within each part but have separated them with commas so it is possible to convert them to a list in a column in Excel if wanted.

Part 1.

1-2: Spearmint, 3: Lipstick, 4: Blush, 5-6: Sage, 7: Spearmint, 8: Blush, 9-10: Cornish Blue, 11: Cream, 12-13: Cornish Blue, 14-15: Sherbet, 16: Sage, 17: Spearmint, 18: Sage, 19: Blush, 20: Lipstick, 21: Blush, 22: Lipstick, 23: Blush, 24: Lipstick, 25: Spearmint, 26: Sage, 27-30: Sherbet.

Part 2.

33-34: Cornish Blue, 35: Spearmint, 36: Blush, 37: Lipstick, 38: Blush, 39: Cream, 40-41: Sherbet, 42: Cream, 43-44: Spearmint, 45: Sage.

Part 3.

46-47:Cornish Blue, 48: Cream, 49-50: Cornish Blue, 51: Cream, 52: Cornish Blue, 53-54: Cream, 55: Cornish Blue.

Part 4.

56-63: Sherbet, 64: Sage, 65: Blush, 66: Spearmint.

Part 5.

67-68: Sherbet, 69: Sage, 70: Spearmint, 71: Sage, 72-73: Sherbet, 74: Sage, 75: Cream, 76-77: Spearmint.

Part 6. Corners start here

78-80: Cornish Blue, 81: Spearmint, 82: Sage, 83: Cream, 84: Blush, 85: Cream, 86: Lipstick, 87: Cream, 88: Blush, 89: Cream, 90: Sherbet.

Part 7. Corners finish on row 97.

91: Sage, 92: Cream, 93: Spearmint, 94-95: Sherbet, 96: Blush, 97: Lipstick, 98-99: Sherbet, 100: Blush.

Part 8.

101: Spearmint, 102: Lipstick, 103: Spearmint, 104: Blush, 105: Sage, 106-107: Sherbet, 108: Spearmint.

Part 9.

109: Sherbet, 110: Sage, 111: Spearmint, 112, Cornish Blue, 113, Cream, 114: Cornish Blue.