Under your nose.. .

Sometimes the thing you are looking for is right under your nose the whole time.

For the past week or so you may have seen that I have been enjoying working on my corner to corner crochet blanket - some may say this has bordered on obsession - but as I am powering through my sock yarn stash it has to be a good thing.

I have decreed that this blanket shall be full of light, bright colours - think spring garden flowers. Colours that make me think happy seasonal thoughts. Especially if I can eat happy, seasonal chocolate at the same time. The only problem is that my sock yarn stash contains rather a lot of grey. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of grey - just not in this particular blanket.

And so I have spent a rather embarrassing amount of time online this week looking for pretty, pink speckled yarns. Not my usual choice for my design work but yarn which is just the ticket for this ridiculously addictive blanket.

Imagine my surprise then, when a chance rootle through my stash drawers came up with this perfect pink speckled yarn from last years The Golden Skein. At the time I didn’t know what to do with it (other than pet it) and so it was tucked away lovingly into my stash.

And now it’s time has come. The stash has revealed it at just the right time and so within 5 minutes the yarn was wound and I was gleefully adding it into my blanket.

DH has taken to referring to me working on my blanket as my ‘feeding the monster’ - so quickly does yarn disappear into the thing. And I think he is quite heartened at the rate my sock yarn scraps are dwindling. Although he doesn’t realise that the drawers where I keep my stash are a far bigger monster and empty space within it is not to be tolerated - more yarn will need to be purchased and soon, to feed it.

Maths fail

I know it would ordinarily be obvious to anyone who was thinking straight but in my defence I was overcome by yarn fumes and the strong urge of spring startitis.

Crochet, as we all know uses up more yarn than knitting. Which makes it ideal for stashbusting purposes - although careful planning can be needed to ensure you don’t run out of yarn.

When starting my corner to corner crochet blanket I thought briefly about joining up all my scraps into a large magic ball and just letting the colours change as they fell naturally. That was far too easy of course and didn’t quite suit the way my brain works so, after a bit of experimentation I decided to go for two rows of each colour to produce a striped effect.

So far, so good.

The problem is of course, I’m sure you following at the back have already picked this up, is that as the rows get longer I am going to need a lot more yarn. And I mean A Lot more. The average mini skein has 20g yarn (approx 80m) and much of my scrap yarn doesn’t weigh more than this either. My blanket is currently measuring 50cm along the two long sides and I am already using up about 15g yarn per stripe.

It doesn’t take a maths genius to figure this out, but it has taken me two days. Draw your own conclusions. But, as the loveable Baldrick of Blackadder fame would say “I have a cunning plan”.

Short of abandoning my perfectionist scruples and switching to a magic ball philosophy, the next best thing is to make my blanket from 4 panels. I will work the first panel until the stripe takes up 20g yarn and then start the decreases. Based on where I am now I estimate that each panel will be 60cm (24") square - giving me a decent sized lap blanket of 120 x 120cm (47 x 47"). I will end up with lots of small bits of yarn which will be ideal for adding into the other 3 squares - ensuring that the blanket still has a cohesive feel.

This also has the happy accident of keeping the project high on the portability stakes. Rendering a project perfect for ‘sofa knitting only’ is the kiss of death for many of my long term projects, and this way I can still carry it along with me (and it can come on holiday with me too).

Big plans

Blossom has big plans for the day. And by big I mean mainly sleeping, grooming and a little light napping. She was thrilled to bits to discover a snazzy new blanket on the bed this morning. The fact that it is only a small blanket corner is neither here nor there it is clearly worthy of further inspection. 

I would dearly love to stay here too. A second cup of coffee has been consumed and the house is just starting to wake up around me. Time to move and get my jobs done for the day but despite Blossom's best attempts the blanket will be rolled away and will come with me. There will be enough cat hair integrated into this project during its lifetime without adding any more at this stage.

I know full well that by the time I come back to this spot later this afternoon Blossom will have barely moved- except for the aforementioned light grooming. In my next life I'd like to come back as a cat please. Or maybe I'll wait until cats have evolved opposable thumbs first. Not sure I could deal with all that napping without a little knitting to break it up.