Sunday 15 February 2015

Make: Fleecy Turtle Blanket

I'm not the only member of my family who loves a blanket - my sister is also a blanket fan. This is perhaps unsurprising given she is at uni in Scotland, which is Northern and cold...

In a Deramores sale I found this James C. Brett Fluffy Chunky yarn for about £2 for each 50g ball. A search on Ravelry for a chunky crochet blanket and I came across this turtle-design baby blanket, which I thought was very cute! I've never crocheted hexagons before, so this would be a good challenge.


Although I used the pattern as inspiration, I didn't follow the complicated hexagon pattern described, mainly because the fluffiness of the yarn meant you couldn't even see individual stitches, let alone if it was a "DC" or a "DCBP"... Instead, I used pairs of double crochet with one chain between each nodule. Each hexagon has two rounds of green, one round of blue, then uses a flat-braid join in white as a border and to join the hexagons together.


The neat mathematical part of my brain really loves the way they tessellate so neatly together! I made 63 hexagons in total to form the body of the turtle. Then using the green, I added some legs, a head and a tiny tail at the bottom - to make a pretty good turtle, if you ask me!

 
In total, I used two balls of white, three of blue and five of green. £20 of yarn to make a very warm, very snuggly, very special one-off blanket for a very special sister. Happy Birthday Schwesterchen!
 

Monday 9 February 2015

Mend Weekend

I've been working on a medium-term project for a while, which I'll update on next week. But this weekend, I also finally got round to mending a few things that have been needing a bit of TLC.

My combat trousers that I fixed in November were in need of a bit more attention, though less serious this time in that it was just the button that had come off. It's an odd button, as it attaches on with a wide band, rather than with holes for thread.

I'd fixed it before with some green ribbon, which hadn't lasted too long. So this time, I triple reinforced it...


Then there were my fluffy slippers, bought from Accessorize only in September. The pom-poms on one side had come off, so I used some yarn and a darning needle to do a swift repair.


All while sitting on the floor in the spare room, exercising our fat little guinea piglets... It's not much, but it's a start!