A new thing

The Blanket of Exacting Requirements, as I have named it is done, off the needles and blocking as I type. I’m really pleased with it and my son (who has aforementioned requirements) is mightily pleased too. This is my first time using West Yorkshire Spinners Colourlab DK for a blanket - having taken the decision earlier in the year to refrain from using acrylic yarns from now on - and I have to say that I love everything about it.

The colour range is good, it’s an impressively all-British produced yarn and it retails for under £7 per 100g. I know this reads a bit like an advert and I apologise but really, I promise I haven’t been paid to promote this yarn. I just really like it.

Whenever you mention knitting with pure wool though the issue of price always rears it’s head, with the assumptions that pure wool is expensive and impractical for blankets. So I thought I would do a little road-test and report back on this blanket at intervals so you can see how it is holding up. I have two boys and an equal number of cats and so knits in our household are very much used and abused.

As for price. I used approx 7 balls of this yarn in various colours which equates to less than £50 for the whole project (7 x £6.95). It’s absolutely not the cheapest yarn available but for something that will be used and loved for years that’s a price point that I’m very comfortable with. Price isn’t something we often speak about in relation to our finished objects. We talk about yardage and colours used but actual hard cash is frequently overlooked in our discussions.

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False starts and firm opinions

It was the kind of scenario you just couldn’t make up. 

Picture the scene. I am doing a bit of flatlay photography for my one Instagram photo of the week. I’ve got my little blanket project in progress, my coffee still hot and the junk on the bed shoved to the side out of side.

In wanders my eldest son, he glances at the bed and asks if that’s his new blanket I’m working on. “Why yes it is” I answer, “Just like the one you asked for”.

His old baby blanket suffered a sad demise a few years ago, courtesy of our old, incontinent cat and he had been asking for a new one for a while.

He expressed concern that this new blanket, whilst using the same colours ‘looked different’ to how he remembered it. There then followed a slightly confusing conversation which only after careful consultation with my Ravelry project library did we determine that we were in fact each talking of an entirely different baby blanket.

The one I was remembering - a Moderne Baby blanket - of log cabin-like construction had in fact belonged to his brother (oops). The one he was picturing with fond memories was in fact the first baby blanket I ever designed - the Fuss Free Baby Blanket - which starts with a central square knitted flat and then has stitches picked up around that square to be knit in the round.

Realisation dawned as we looked at each other across my lovely flatlay. 

But luckily the central patch would serve just as well for the other blanket and I really hadn’t done more than an hour or two’s knitting on it. 

So, I learnt a valuable lesson. To always check what’s in someone else’s mind when they ask for a knitted something. And he learnt how to frog and rewind yarn!