Time for a Border!

I have now finished my Celtic Knot Granny Blanket as far as the pattern I created. I didn’t include a full border as I always feel that the border on a blanket is the way you personalise it.

First some more pictures.

Here it is on the bed. I chose the size so all the Celtic plaitwork part would be visible easily.

As an aside I weighed the remaining four different main colour yarns when I had finished and again I had used 20% more of the green and almost exactly the same of the other three!

And a more total view.

I have been thinking about the border for a while and I shared this on Instagram.

Made with oddments of yarn

This was partly inspired by my experiments with Mosaic Crochet where I realised that by working in the back loops of the stitches, it left the front loops available for further embellishment. I fancied creating an interweaving of the different colours and this seemed to create the effect I was after.

However although the rows of stitches here created a natural symmetrical wave, I knew that to add it to a straight edge would require a wavy base row.

So I now drew it out on paper. And worked on a few tentative ideas for carrying the design round the corner.

(In the event I took a more instinctive approach to working the corner though it did come out similarly.)

So of course I needed something to try it out on.

If any one has followed me since Rachel’s CAL they may recognise the square I chose to work round. It is one of about nine or ten that basic maths meant I wasn’t able to incorporate into the final blanket. I have kept them in my chest and now I was able to choose one that was suitable.

So here is the base row. Then I added the wavy rows. and added some overlay

Not sure if to do another row of waves.

I rather fancied a lacy edge after this but I decided to look at my Border book.
and found a design where the first row was very similar to the edge I had on the border so I tried working the following rows to see if it would work. Wasn’t sure I liked it. so I tried again and decided to add another wavy row and move the ripples up a row.Then repeated the base row so as to create a flat edge, added some dcs and chains that I will follow by an unspecified number of granny rows and probably finish off with what I think of as a Granny corner row as with my flower cloth.

Up to now I had relied on a few simple sums and a degree of mathematical intuition to decide that I could go all round the blanket with my overlay and find that it joined up harmoniously. Filled with self doubt however, since it is rather a large undertaking, needing me to work with all four balls at once, I decided to use the computer to help me check, so I created a rough segment to base it on and created this.

Here is a corner. I didn’t need to have all the over/unders marked correctly, so I just did the ones I needed.

This was done before I moved the overlay but I don’t think that changes anything.

This is how far I have got working on the border.

Might have got further but have been working on another project as well. Will show you more when the border is completed.