Blanket Endings Again.....

After a laborious 2 days....I've finished the Scrappy Blanket....that's the name of the pattern, but personally I think it does deserve a better name, but I'll save that for another day.   I think the name comes from using up all your scraps of yarn....slightly obvious, but this one is not scrap yarn.  It is the most delightful 100% organic Australian Merino Wool....soft as butter and unfortunately no longer available.  The family business that made this yarn in NSW decided to stop producing it.....Shame really, it is great yarn.

***Updated 29th July.  I have done some investigating and it turns out that the business has been bought out and manufacturing has started again.  Some colours are not available as I know the previous owner of the business ran the stock down, but here is the link for this yarn. here

This blanket was a lot of work, the pattern requires you to hand stitch each octagon together, and let me tell you that is a lot of work....that combined with all the colour changes, there were so many ends to sew in, but I think the back looks pretty neat....I'm a sucker for sewing those ends in completely and properly.  I did keep a tally of the hours and there is close to 50 hrs in this blanket alone from start to finish, and in my opinion you'd be a hero if you could do a queen size bed blanket.  This is terribly labour intensive in comparison to other blankets I've done.

I made some slight modifications to the pattern but only in the edging/border.  The original pattern called for the edging of the blankets to be left with the octagon shape and a slight single crochet border making the blanket uneven all around.  I for one hate blankets left with uneven edges, so every crochet blanket that I've ever made has been made into a complete rectangle or square if it had uneven edging such as a ripple blanket...I like to fill the gaps!!

You can see what I mean if you look at the collage of pics.  This pics reveal how it could have looked if I'd put just a small single crochet border, but as you can see I did go around it and filled the hexie gaps with a series of half double crochet, double crochet and treble crochet stitches.  I then continued to go around the blanket with single crochet stitches, just reverting to half double crochet stitches to straighten up the waves until by around the 5th row the blanket edge had straightened completely.  All finished off with a very basic scalloped border.

I always block my blankets on completion and this was no different....you can see how soft and drapey it now looks....all the fibres have relaxed, the stitch definition is revealed and the blanket grew by around 7 cm in length and 4 cm in width....It's now 85cm x 65cm or 33.5inches x 25.5 inches, perfect size for a pram, floor, moses basket or small cot....or just decorative hanging over the side of a cot.....it's too beautiful not to use and some little bub will be snug as a bug.

That's all I can really tell you about this beauty.  The original pattern is here, and you'll find my blanket here.

Gosh now to find a new blanket project, nothing better than having a blanket project on the go.

Update 23rd July - Thanks so much if you've found your way from the CCC.  Reading all your comments over there I did note a few comments about the pattern, yes this pattern is not a freebie, but the link on the Ravelry page to the pattern on Amazon is worth the price if you choose to purchase the book.  The book comes with 6 crochet patterns and well worth spending the money if you love crochet.  Thanks V.


Cheerio