Started mid November, finished end of Jan 2019. My husband picked this one, out of a selection of blanket patterns I liked. He liked the vibrant colours. I liked the look of this, but it wasn’t the most fun to do, as it was a bit TOO repetitive. However, it looked great when finished.

First part was great 🙂

Next stage a bit boring! Especially crocheting them together!

The next stage was unusual – pentagons. Not known for their fantastic ability to tesselate… so they are IRREGULAR pentagons. I couldn’t use my normal method of doing round by round, partly due to the seemingly randomness of the colour scheme, but also because the last round crochets them together as you go!

So after pentagons, we got further IRREGULAR hexagons. Even though the colours seem random, I did give doing each round at a time a go:

And finally a border:

A friend commented that it was the one she liked most out of the blankets I had done, so I gave it to her as a birthday gift. I now need to make another, as my husband liked it too!! I do agree it looks fantastic!

With Demelza finished on 28th July 2018, this was me on the 29th!!!

This one is also Stylecraft DK, some standard, and some batik elements (which cost a little bit more per ball, but still great value). I had come across the Cosmic blanket on one of the Facebook crochet groups I follow, and I joined the specific group for this blanket, which had been another Crochet a-long (CAL), which had finished. The group had lots of lovely pictures of finished blankets, so I was highly motivated to start mine! The designer, Helen Shrimpton, had 4 suggested colour schemes, and I took one and varied just a couple of the colours.

The pattern is still available for free here:
http://crystalsandcrochet.com/crochet/category/cosmic-cal/

The initial instructions are extremely helpful and there is a handy row by row colour guide, so you can figure out which rows you want to change colours on. There are also video guides for each part, which I referred to for a couple of complicated rows.

This differed massively from the previous blankets as it is crocheted in one. The rows get bigger and bigger!! And you need to count the stitches accurately or else!

Part 1 – grew fairly quickly…

Part 2 – making the hexagon into a rectangle. This was taken away on Summer hols!

Not sure on the parts now…this is probably 3 & 4

And it keeps growing:

And done. 3 months work – at the end of October.

This one was claimed by my daughter, as it goes with her room 🙂

After finishing the Ross blanket at the end of April, it didn’t take me long to get onto the next one – the Demelza in June 2018. Again, this used colours I just wouldn’t pick myself, but I thought looked great. It isn’t so much learning new stitches, but the way they are put together. These squares were really varied and great fun to do.

I learnt from the Ross blanket the best way for me to work on them. I start off by doing a complete first square, to see what it looks like. I then work on the remaining squares of that design each round at a time. That way, I remember the pattern and get them done faster. I do the round for each square, and then sew all those ends in. These were week 1. After the first small squares I remembered to take pictures of the rounds in progress:

Week 2: I even started taking them out and about with me. So addicted, I took crochet with me when I took my son out to fly his drone!

Week 3: Note the pattern is downloaded on the ipad… hence it is often in the pictures!! I love having the patterns like this, as they have lots of photos to help, and you can always zoom in to read the pattern!

Week 4: Lovely flowers

Week 5: Rectangles. These are quite difficult to start and I had to youtube how to do the foundation treble row to start each one. I would have to youtube it again, as I can’t remember!! What on earth did we do before youtube!? What I do like is how effective this is making different height flowers, but I don’t seem to have a picture of the finished rectangles on their own.

Week 6: :The middle. Another lovely 3D flower.

Week 7: Joining. Not a fun stage, but exciting when you see the squares all coming together. These are crocheted together, and it does take quite a long time doing, and then sewing the ends in (which is why it is so important to sew in the ends of the individual squares as you go. Imagine how long this stage would take if you hadn’t!)

Then Week 8: Border. Each row takes an age now, as it is huge! Especially compared to the individual squares, where you make progress quite quickly! But it is well worth the effort, as the border finishes it off just right.

Now I either got seriously addicted to crochet, and couldn’t put this down, or I got much faster, or a combination of the two! Started beginning of June 2018, finished at the end of July! I had already lined up my next blanket to make too!!!

I came across this while looking for something for my mother in law for Christmas. She had just made a blanket from a kit and had expressed an interest in another, so I had picked one for her which was more straight forward rows back and forth. But I had fallen for this one! It looked so interesting, I loved the colours, and I had never done anything like this before.

Black Sheep Wools were doing this as a kit at the time, so I went along and bought it from them. The pattern is an online download by Catherine’s Crochet Corner. It was originally a CAL (another abbreviation I hadn’t known – Crochet-a-long), so released in weekly parts. But that was a while ago so all available to download now. It uses Stylecraft Special Double Knit (SSDK), which is really good value wool at £1.89 per 100g ball.

I started this in Feb 2018 and couldn’t put it down. It used stitches I had never heard of before, things like front post, back post, in double and trebles, double trebles, and standing trebles, but the instructions and pictures were so good it was easy to figure out. I loved learning the new stitches, and the lovely patterns they made, and using colour combos I would never have dreamed of. Note the ends are all sewn in as you go along… it would be an absolute nightmare to finish if you didn’t!! And crocheting the squares together is also a killer of a job, but well worth it. My son has claimed this for his own, and we even decorated his bedroom in colours to match this blanket!