Ripple blanket statistics

I was in so much of a hurry to get my sea and sand ripple blanket post out that I forgot to add some statistics about it. And the weather is now dry too , so I managed to get a photograph of the whole completed blanket.

Of the fourteen balls of Stylecraft yarn that I started with – More about the colours here- https://rainbowjunkiecorner.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/ripple-blanket-recap/

just these small balls remain.

I am not sure why some of the balls are much smaller than the others though I do think that with some colours the yarn seems thicker and so there is probably less length and I may even use more for a row. The white though is smaller because I used some when experimenting on making crochet orchids.

The blanket measures just over 3ft wide and 6ft long at approximately 97 by 186cm.

Each of the fourteen colours were used on eight double rows. (The pattern uses two different rows to make a stripe.) The middle seventeen stripes were worked in the same group of colours from my stash yarns as I had calculated that there would only be enough yarn in a ball for eight stripes and I wanted the blanket a bit longer. This added 9.5 inches or 24cm to the total length.

That makes a total of 129 stripes.

This will enlarge for a closer look

I will put the balls in my oddment drawer, ready to be used for small projects.

I’ll end with a photograph you’ve seen before that is my favourite – because I can!

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Sea and Sand blanket completed

I’ve just had a very exhausting but fun  week with my granddaughter but I have so many photographs to show you that I need a bit more time so I decided that I will show you something that I completed just before my granddaughter arrived.

My sea and sand blanket

Here it is folded up on the camphor wood chest.

It is a miserable day today but luckily when I had finished the body of the blanket it was bright and dry so I took a photograph of the whole thing on some outside paving below a window.

This will enlarge for a closer look!

I wanted to give it a border and my first thought was to use white but then I thought that white may get grubby easily and spoil the look so I settled for turquoise.

Edge of hexagon blanket

Spectrum ripple blanket

My first thought had been to use crab stitch as in my hexagon blanket but I tried a small sample and it didn’t work.
I also wanted this border to enhance rather than detract from the ripply nature of the blanket so far from filling in the ripples to give a straight border as I had done with my spectrum ripple blanket, I did a couple of rows of double crochet (US – sc) along the ripples and created a ripply edge up the sides.

The pattern does have a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ side.

Right –

and Wrong –

But they are both attractive.

I think that this pattern makes a really lovely blanket and I hope my daughter likes it.

Half-way there!

This will enlarge if you click on it

I am now just over half way through my ‘sea and sand’ ripple blanket. Over half way in that I have decided to reverse the order of the colours for the stripes of the second half and the top royal blue stripe will not be repeated.

I calculated before I started the blanket (in the way that I do) that each 100 g ball would be enough for eight of the double rows so as I chose fourteen colours that would give me fifty-six rows for half the blanket. When I had completed those fifty-six rows I decided that I really wanted the blanket to be a little longer so the last nine rows above (and the eight I am about to do) have been worked with yarn out of my general stash.

I wasn’t sure if I liked it earlier on but now I have got this far I have changed my mind and like it very much.

The next time I do a post about it will be when I have finished it, together with a border.

After all this time, I now find that I can mostly make nice even puff stitches on the first attempt, so I must be learning something. That’s the advantage of making a blanket like this. You do get a lot of practice at the stitches involved.

I took the above picture last week when the light was good and I was half-way through.  I am planning to reduce my quota from five stripes a week to four because that will still have the blanket finished by September and it’s easier to fit in with other projects but this last weekend I have done another four and a half stripes.

 

Ripple blanket update

Just a quick update on my sea and sand ripple blanket. The weather is dry so I was able to take it outside to photograph.

I am about three eighths of the way through (43 rows). At five rows a week I should have reached forty five but I am still on course for not much more than six months to make it.

I also want to share a picture of a daffodil that I was given on Sunday because it was one of three things that made me happy that day (Mother’s Day). The other two were being at my daughters that morning (post the trip I shared with you) and having lunch at my son’s and then playing WiU games all afternoon.

In my church very often all the mothers are given daffodils after Mass. However as I am altar server M.C.  I never count as being a mother but one of the other women there whom I have known since my children were little came up to me after Mass and gave me hers as she didn’t like people being missed. (I didn’t like to take it but she said she ‘had plenty’ and it was such a kind thought.)

I have it on the mantlepiece and it is bringing a little sunshine into my life.

 

Ripple blanket recap

First month {= five week(end)s} of blanket making.

(We’ve had some decent sunshine recently so it was very foolish of me to wait till today to take a photograph, when it is dark and wet, but here it is!)

Just to recap:

the pattern I am using is this

from Jan Eaton’s “200 Ripple Stitch Patterns”. I am not doing double colour ripples as well as single as in the picture. Each ripple is actually two rows so all the ends are down the one side. Fun!

I am using a 4.5mm hook and the yarn is Stylecraft Special DK in the following fourteen colours:-

White, silver, parchment, camel, mocha, turquoise, sherbet, aspen, teal, royal, bluebell, denim, aster, cloud blue.

or as in the picture –

parchment, aster, white, turquoise, silver,

denim, sherbet, mocha, royal,

camel, teal, cloud blue, aspen, bluebell.

So far I am target for having it finished by next winter – if not six months time. I am spending about three days on the blanket so that gives me time to do other things.

I am beginning to get a handle on the htr3togs (US – hdc3togs) and not having to undo them so often. I find it is fairly easy to check that I am doing the pattern correctly,  so hopefully no undoing the previous row because I made a mistake at the begining. As a precaution though, I am leaving the previous colour attached until I have completed the first row in the new colour.

Another cushion cover!

[The colours in these photographs are not completely true to life I am afraid. Some are better than others.]

I’ve finished the cushion I wanted to make with the leftover yarn from my spectrum granny ripple blanket.

I started using one colour for each row and was very pleased with the effect.

But then when I got half-way, I thought it might be interesting to make the other side with mixed up colours and using the normal double rows of each colour, since of course that is the only way to make each coloured stripe the same. So that is what I did.

Now the five ripples were just a little bit narrower than was ideal for the cushion pad I had (though six ripples would have been too much) so I worked down the two sides with a row of dcs (US scs) two to each row of stitches to give a firm edge and then finished off with a row of trebles (US dcs) to give a bit more width.

Here is the whole piece.

The last royal blue double stripe was designed to cover the ’emperor’ and ‘royal’ rows at the start to give a seamless look.

Never a fan of sewing (since I am not very good at it) I chose to join the two sides together with dcs (US scs) worked through the stitches of both edges.

Now I had decided to try an idea I had had for a long time when thinking of making cushions. This was that when joining the two sides it might look good to finish off with crab stitch like I did for my hexagon blanket to give a corded look to the edge.

A row of crab stitches

Now normally when I do crab stitch I work my row of dcs (US scs) and then just reverse direction and work the crab stitch back along the row.

I started doing this only to realise that crab stitch and dcs do have a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ side just like trebles and that I had done the row of dcs with the wide stripes as ‘right’ side not the spectrum side.

Rather than undo the whole join, I decided to see what would happen if I worked the crab stitch from the other end so that the ‘wrong’ side of the dcs was married to the ‘right’ side of the crab stitch and vice versa. I decided that this actually evened out the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ look and worked well.

So here is the spectrum ‘right’ side

and the reverse

Another thing worth noting is that on my hexagon blanket the edge seems to have a little bit of a ripple and I always thought it was because when working the crab stitch I hadn’t bothered to make allowance for the irregular edge but with the cushion I was noticing the same so I changed down to a smaller hook – 3.5mm, from the 4mm that I had used for the rest of the cushion, and that solved the problem.

And here is the finished cushion –

Right side

And the back /alternative side.

I rather liked the way the rows go when you use a different colour for each row, with the alternation of level and thickness.

I joined the cover with four little buttons. I have yet to use buttons as a feature in the things I make and the join was meant to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Here’s a close up

I just have a few tiny balls of yarn left.

I think I rather like this cushion making. As much fun as blankets in choosing pattern and colours but so much quicker. 🙂

Trying out some ideas

The last couple of weeks I have allowed myself to try out a few ideas instead of starting on a new serious project to run alongside the CAL and granny ripple blanket.

One of these was to make a dishcloth out of ‘dishcloth cotton’.

I bought some dishcloth cotton a while ago with an eye to using it to experiment with things I might make in cotton and perhaps to actually make a dishcloth.

The first two things I discovered were that it was more expensive that I had expected and that it seemed more aran or chunky thickness that DK.

So it wasn’t going to be much good for experiments but I still thought I could make a dishcloth, which was presumably what it was for. 🙂

A friend told me how she knitted dishcloths but I wanted to try crochet. I tried a couple of crochet patterns I found on the web but wasn’t happy with the results.

But when I made square no. 52 for the CAL, I thought that it might make a good basis for a dishcloth as the pattern was essentially reversible and had what I thought was a good surface.

So I crocheted an eight inch square in the cotton, thought it was a bit boring and added a red border with the cotton left over from my ‘flower cloth’.

So how is it as a dishcloth?

Plus points.

• Although it is thicker than my normal supermarket cotton dishcloth or J-cloth I soon got used to it.
• It works well and is good at cleaning up mugs used for tea and plates and casseroles.

Negatives.

• It doesn’t dry overnight like the thinner cloths.
• I don’t know how long it will be before it gets stained and disgusting looking and I feel I have to replace it.
• If I have to replace it too often, it will be a pain having to keep making a new one.
• I haven’t calculated but I am sure it must work out more expensive that supermarket cloths.

So the jury is out on whether I will be making another one. I might try knitting one as that would be looser and may dry quicker.

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My next idea was to see if I could use a modified version of the fan bookmarks and the yarn left over from my socks to make a scarf.

This was all I was able to make from the yarn left over from one of the socks.

I decided

• I loved the look.
• (You can’t see the size but) It would be better made in DK weight yarn as it was a bit too narrow.
• That I would need to buy yarn for such a project but it wouldn’t be cheap.

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Although I am not even half-way with my granny ripple blanket my mind is already looking forward to what I might make for my next blanket.

I rather fancied trying a ‘sea and sand’ coloured blanket and was on the lookout for a good pattern.

I happened to borrow from the library Jan Eaton’s “200 Ripple Stitch Patterns” and found just one pattern that really excited me and made a photocopy.

I thought that this would be just perfect for a ‘sea and sand’ blanket and, looking through the colours I had available, decided I had enough to make something that would give the general idea.

I thought that I could use a demo square of this pattern as a new cafetière cosy but my first attempt using a 4.5 hook, that is probably what I would use for a blanket, was too wide so I tried again with a 4mm hook and produced this.

I did not find it the easiest pattern and  it was not until the last few rows that I was not having to redo many of the ‘htr3tog’ (UK) two, or even three or four times before I could get them right but I love the look and it is worth the effort.

More about the cosy on Monday!

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Lastly I thought I would include an update on my granny ripple blanket.

I think you can now see how the colours go, though they are not entirely accurate in the photograph.