Crochet blanket: candy, unicorn, rainbows...

Another home-made Christmas gift is this blanket, which I've been working on for several months. It started, like all my crochet projects, as a stash-busting exercise. However, as usual, I could only get so far with my leftovers, after using up every last scrap of DK weight, pastel-ish coloured yarns.  I also used doubled-up sock yarn and even some heavier aran weight yarns too, to try to push the scraps as far as possible. And as you can see, some of the colours aren't quite pastel either!

I decided quite early on that this wouldn't be a perfectly planned, Cath Kidson-esque blanket; but a far more home made feeling one, which much more character. So, although the majority of the yarns used are fuzzy wool blends, there is the odd (green) round of shiny cotton. Also many of the stripes are not perfect pairs (two rounds per colour, like in the centre); and even the rounds are not completed in only one colour, but are interrupted partway through. This is solely down to running out of yarn, and picking the closest I had available to the shade.

The blanket got fairly large before I had to admit defeat and buy some new balls of yarn to finish it. I wanted it to be an actual usable size for an adult, not just a tiny lap or child-sized blanket. Unfortunately due to fluorescent lighting in the shop, the yarns I chose turned out to be quite a bit darker and stronger-coloured in real light/life. You can notice this in the blue section on the outside. As Christmas by this point was fast-approaching, I didn't have any time to exchange them in the shop; and cranked out the rest of the blanket with a week's commuting on the tube.

I finished it off with a wavy shell edging, but as I was so last-minute this year there was no time to block it and get it dry. I do regret not being able to wet block it, as this would have made the blanket look much better. Nonetheless, my sister was very pleased with it, and the family very impressed.

 

My teenage sister is currently demonstrating conflicts between super-girly-cute-rainbow-unicorn-pastel-glitter-candy love, and emo-goth-indie-everything-black-and-grey-and-lots-of-eyeliner. Obviously this blanket is a nod to the former. It's OK to subscribe to more than one style though, and the teen years are prime for experimentation in looks. Now she can be all cosy, too.

-Anushka