Willow Square Blanket

 I am so excited about showing this off.  I started this well over a year ago. Probably two years ago but I took a year out from it. I picked it back up again three weeks ago and it is now finished. The longest part being the border.

These are the colours I plan for my bedroom when I get my new home and this blanket is in preparation for that. I can't wait to see it on my new bed. I have actually used it already, briefly. Couldn't help myself but it's now safely stowed away until it gets a new home.

I used the Willow Square from Jan Eaton's 200 Crochet Blocks. I reviewed this book previously. It's a pretty square and it's versatile. I have seen it done in just one colour or several colour combinations. It looks good each time and it looks different each time. If you are experienced at crochet it's not that difficult to do. Having said that, when I went back to it three weeks ago I had great difficulty with one of the rounds. Couldn't get it to work out at all. I had to go to my blanket and look at how I had done the squares before and use that rather than the book. After joining together a line of squares and starting to join it to the main blanket I realised I had missed out a round on all these new square. It just meant I had to undo the joining and then add the missing round. I didn't have that problem the first time. This is what I get for setting it aside so long.

I don't have an image of the yarn. I didn't think to do that when I first started this. The yarn is a 4ply by the Women's Institute which is exclusive to Hobbycraft. Even though it's an acrylic based yarn it has a silky smoothness to it and a slight shimmer. It's lovely to work with although a little bit splitty like cotton. Otherwise it's lovely to work with and worth it for those colours. I used a 4mm hook and the squares came out a decent size. The blanket is 12 by 12 squares. I probably could have gotten away with 10 by 10 but I like the size and when it comes to blankets I usually err on the side of caution.

When I worked on this initially I had a vague idea that I wanted a fairly simple border. Not my usual fan border. Possible just a few rounds of dc stitches. In that time I had picked up a book on borders. Given that I had a lot of yarn leftover it was never going to be simple and so I picked out this bobble border. It's not too lacey and so I think it highlights the willow square rather than take the attention away. I also think that it fits in with the bold colours of the blanket. The border was easy to do but it ate yarn and I worried that I would have to buy more. Turned out I just had enough. The book is called Around The Corner: Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman. I plan to do a review on it at some point so I won't say too much there.

So that's my blanket and another one of my WIP list. If you are on Instagram I highly recommend you search Willow Square to see all the different images. Or even google it.

Acer Shawl CAL #2

So, I actually started this shawl a few months back and it featured in October's WIP post.  To be honest I actually finished it a few months ago. Yesterday though I decided to finally have it blocking overnight while I was on night shift and today I sewed in the ends. Does it count as a first finish if that was all I had to do with it. If that was the case it should probably have been shown in Monday's post. Not sure I can count it as a first finish. Feels a little like cheating.

Anyway, it is now completely finished. If you remember the Acer shawl was part of a crochet along hosted by Love Crochet. The pattern was designed by Joanne Scarce who made herself available for questions while the CAL was on. The pattern was a little difficult at first. That was purely due to my own inexperience. And of course self doubt since I just assumed I was doing it wrong. Once I got into the swing of the pattern it became quite easy as it repeated over a couple of rows. It got to the stage I didn't need the pattern and it became quite addictive.

As I mentioned earlier this is my second Acer shawl and you can see my first one here. The yarn in the first one is not only brighter but is more delicate. For the second shawl I used Sublime luxurious tweed DK. It's a bulkier yarn and feels stiffer. It also made for a larger shawl which was what I wanted. What I like about this yarn is actually the colour. It changes depending on the lighting. It has subtle hints of other colours in there.

Oh, and thanks to this CAL, not only do I have two new shawls but I have a new blog to follow and instagram account as the designer has both. You can see her makes on her blog Not So Granny.