I had planned on doing something else today and to post the blankets further down the line. However, if you want a blanket all ready for Christmas you should probably start now. You might not have much time for anything else mind you. Most of these blankets are crochet and you will find that they will grow much more quickly than the knitted. Unless of course you are just learning to crochet.
This first blanket is called a Snowflake Afghan and is by Lois Olson. You can find her pattern on ravelry. I would probably do this in pale blue rather than dark. But that's the beauty of something like this. You can choose the colours to suit. I have seen this on ravelry done in green, red and even variegated yarn. You could even have more than one colour in there. This is done in aran which would work up more quickly but again you could do it in a finer yarn for a smaller hexagon. You would just need to do more of them. Of course if you are really clever you could do your own matching cushion.
This pattern is a little more complicated but still crochet. It's called the Yule Tree Throw and even comes with a matching cushion cover. This pattern is available on Red Heart which is an American yarn brand. A friend of mine made a lovely blanket with this yarn. Lovely and soft and she was able to get a good deal by ordering it in bulk. Again with this pattern you could change the colour to suit yourself. Although the green does go with the tree motif. This is one of those aran style crochet blankets which I have admired but never attempted.
This blanket is a little bit more special than the others in that it was part of a crochet along. The panels were revealed one at a time giving people the chance to crochet alongside others and making the final piece a surprise. You can find the entire pattern on Repeat After Me. This is a fab crochet blog which has lots of patterns and well worth the read. This is again a complex (to me) crochet pattern which involves colour changes and a type of crochet that is all the rage just now and that's the corner to corner (or c2c) blanket. The author of this pattern links a few tutorials on how to do this.
This is the odd one out in that it is quilted and not crochet. This lovely quilted piece is actually a wall hanging but could be made larger to use as a blanket. The pattern for this can be found on Purl Soho which is one of my favourite crafting pages. I love this page for it's simple clean lines. If you visit the website often enough you'll know what I mean. All their makes seem to follow this even if they come from various designers. I think you can always tell a Purl Soho pattern. It's listed under the yarn section of my blog list as Purl Bee. As I said you could always make this larger and you could change the colours to suit such as pale blues and purples.
You have seen this before. This is my mum showing off her Christmas blanket. She was so proud of it and every year it would come out and hang over the sofa. I show you this not to be nostalgic or bring the mood down but to show you that you don't have to have a complex pattern or a specific Christmas pattern to make it a Christmas blanket. You just need to change the colours. In this case my mum was learning both how to crochet and to crochet a granny square. She decided to use that learning experience to make this Christmas blanket. So if you know how to do a granny square you can make a blanket by choosing Christmas colours. You don't even have to have lots of colour changes. So here is a link to a tutorial on how to do a granny square. This was created by Heather of Little Tin Bird which is a lovely blog filled with gorgeous photography and some crochet in there too.
Next week I may have a guest post for you to look forward to. It's from someone that I have unashamedly shouted out about over and over again for being extremely talented. I am also hoping to have a WIP post for October (since it's almost finished) and of course a Christmas post which I have changed the theme of twice now.
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