My Button Box Blanket

Hello, thank you for calling in, I'm always pleased to see you here, you are all welcome.  We are all well but quite soggy as it has rained and rained and rained this week, although it did stop long enough for the Best Beloved to mow the lawn on Thursday and for the Painted Ladies to come out and enjoy the buddleia.  I haven't seen them in the garden since August 2009 and for the last fortnight they have been fluttering about whenever the sun has popped out from behind a cloud.  Many cups of tea have been drunk outside while I have watched them dance from flower to flower.

  

However, I have come here today to write about crochet, not about butterflies.  I was inspired to learn to crochet by bloggers, chiefly Lucy at Attic 24, Heather at Little Tin Bird and Fi at Marmalade Rose, and the thing I really wanted to learn how to make was a blanket.  These three women put colours together and made them sing, conjuring harmony from their hooks, and I really fell in love with the idea of making such a blanket for myself.  So I learned how to crochet, with the help of a patient friend and some online tutorials, and over the last couple of years I have made a dozen blankets for babies and children - Facebook showed me a photo of one of my Shropshire rainbow blankets in London the other day and I was thrilled to bits.  I felt that I was ready to tackle a full-sized blanket but I just couldn't find the right pattern.  I'm not confident about putting colours together so I wanted that to be done for me, but nothing I saw seemed quite right.  My house is tiny so everything which (and who!) lives in it has to earn its place; my blanket had to be useful and handsome, in colours which I could live with every day and which fit in. I looked at lots of blankets online but some were the wrong colours, some the wrong pattern, some the wrong stitch and some the wrong size.  I dithered, afraid to commit to the expense of such a big project and lacking the confidence to do my own thing.  I knew that I needed to take a deep breath and dive in somewhere but I couldn't find the courage.  Something was holding me back.

When we were camping in Cornwall at the end of May I realised what it was: I wasn't sure that I needed a blanket.  I certainly don't need one on my bed and I already have a couple of lap blankets which I use on the sofa on chilly evenings.  However, I realised that I really would like a camping blanket, something to wrap around me on a chilly evening or to lie on to read on a warm day.  Yes, a camping blanket would be really useful, and when I returned home I began looking again. 

As soon as I saw the Button Box Blanket at Black Sheep Wools I knew that I had found The One: I loved the colours, the wide border, the pattern and the size (it's a small single size and I didn't want anything too big).  This kit appeared to tick every box so I lost no time in placing an online order.

An hour and a half later, Black Sheep Wools sent me an e-mail to let me know that my order had been despatched and the parcel arrived the following day...but I was out so the postman left it with a neighbour and as it was pouring with rain, I didn't retrieve it until the following day.  That was a very long night!  I tore open the packaging and found eleven balls of wonderfully soft, squishy yarn, a project bag and the pattern.  For two days I just looked at the lovely colours spread out on the sofa, periodically picking one or another up to squish it. 

The third day was a Saturday so I picked up my crochet hook in the afternoon and began.  It took me hours to find the rhythm of the pattern and I had to frog my work five times but by the time I went to bed that night I had mastered it.  I really enjoyed making this blanket.  I crocheted on my sofa, on The Teacher's sofa, in bed, in the car, at a friend's house, at our local National Trust property, in the park, on Titterstone Clee and in two different cafes; I couldn't put it down.  

When I finished the body of it after 140 rows I realised that I had made a mistake somewhere and I eventually found it back on row 115, so I had to frog again.  That mistake cost me three days.  I struggled a bit with the border so I asked for help in a Facebook group and the generosity of the crochet community came to my rescue.  I can't honestly say that I enjoyed sewing in the 222 ends but I can say that I found satisfaction in it.  About five weeks later, my blanket was finished.  Would you like to see it? -

  

It's not perfect, I know that the border is a little bit wonky at the corners but I reckon that if I don't say anything, nobody else will notice.  Making this blanket taught me new things, and I like that.  It drapes beautifully, it's soft and squishy (have I mentioned that already?) and I absolutely love it.  My blanket hasn't been camping yet but while it's been in the sitting room it has kept me cosy and I have realised that I can live with its colours very easily.  Now all I have to do is work out what to make with the leftovers...

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x