First of all, Happy New Year to all my readers, hope it's going to be a special one for you. Also, for all the spinners amongst you, Happy St. Distaff Day!! This was the day that women, in general, went back to their labours after Christmas and New Year which included their spinning tasks. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'm going to get any spinning time today, but I do have a few finished projects to show you.
This is the final photo of the blanket that I was knitting before Spinzilla. Mara's blanket :-
This was delivered in October when we visited our new grand-daughter in Scotland. She's a real cutie, but I can't show you photos - Mum and Dad are a bit sensitive about putting photos on the internet for which I can't really blame them. Maybe when she's a bit older.
In the meantime, we had another grand-daughter arriving mid-December which called for . . . yes, you've guessed - another baby blanket! Wingham's are doing a steady trade of super wash Falkland fibre to keep up with this lot!
I spun the yarn during Spinzilla because it was a good opportunity to get it done quickly. This time I chose Star Light Star Bright Baby Blanket by Anna Dillenberg Rachap. It's a well designed, well laid out pattern which is easy to follow. There are a heck of a lot of yarn-overs in there though, and I found it very easy to miss the odd one here and there and then waste a lot of time going backwards to put it right. This is how it was looking after a few pattern repeats. At this point it was actually going quite quickly, mainly because of the plain knitting in between the stars.
I worked on it for a few hours every evening, hoping to get it done in good time to send to Dubai before the baby arrived. Unfortunately, baby had other ideas and was born a month early. Mum had pre-eclampsia and the baby had to be delivered in a hurry, for both their sakes. They called her Holly, because she was supposed to arrive at Christmas time.
After I finished the main part of the blanket, I had to decide whether to add the border or not. When I looked back at project pages for other people who have made this blanket, quite a number didn't knit the border, preferring to leave the edge as is. Although theirs looked pretty good without, I really did like the lacy border so it really had to be done. This was knit separately to the blanket and then stitched on afterwards. Easy peasy, I thought, it's only 16 stitches per row, I'll have it done in no time!! In the end, this part ended up taking me longer than the blanket itself! I worked on it continuously, every spare moment, for probably a couple of weeks. Then I ran out of wool!! Luckily, Wingham still had some of this fibre so I sent for some more, then spent time spinning, plying etc. so I could finish the thing.
Although I probably won't be doing this blanket again, I did enjoy it, and I'm really glad I made the effort to add the border as I think it really makes the project work.
Here's the finished blanket :-
I actually finished this before Christmas, but have been hanging on to it for a while as I didn't want it to go missing in the Christmas post, especially as it needs to go to Dubai and I know from experience that their post can take quite a while to arrive. It will be sent very soon and I'll have everything crossed hoping it gets there in one piece.
This is the final photo of the blanket that I was knitting before Spinzilla. Mara's blanket :-
This was delivered in October when we visited our new grand-daughter in Scotland. She's a real cutie, but I can't show you photos - Mum and Dad are a bit sensitive about putting photos on the internet for which I can't really blame them. Maybe when she's a bit older.
In the meantime, we had another grand-daughter arriving mid-December which called for . . . yes, you've guessed - another baby blanket! Wingham's are doing a steady trade of super wash Falkland fibre to keep up with this lot!
I spun the yarn during Spinzilla because it was a good opportunity to get it done quickly. This time I chose Star Light Star Bright Baby Blanket by Anna Dillenberg Rachap. It's a well designed, well laid out pattern which is easy to follow. There are a heck of a lot of yarn-overs in there though, and I found it very easy to miss the odd one here and there and then waste a lot of time going backwards to put it right. This is how it was looking after a few pattern repeats. At this point it was actually going quite quickly, mainly because of the plain knitting in between the stars.
I worked on it for a few hours every evening, hoping to get it done in good time to send to Dubai before the baby arrived. Unfortunately, baby had other ideas and was born a month early. Mum had pre-eclampsia and the baby had to be delivered in a hurry, for both their sakes. They called her Holly, because she was supposed to arrive at Christmas time.
After I finished the main part of the blanket, I had to decide whether to add the border or not. When I looked back at project pages for other people who have made this blanket, quite a number didn't knit the border, preferring to leave the edge as is. Although theirs looked pretty good without, I really did like the lacy border so it really had to be done. This was knit separately to the blanket and then stitched on afterwards. Easy peasy, I thought, it's only 16 stitches per row, I'll have it done in no time!! In the end, this part ended up taking me longer than the blanket itself! I worked on it continuously, every spare moment, for probably a couple of weeks. Then I ran out of wool!! Luckily, Wingham still had some of this fibre so I sent for some more, then spent time spinning, plying etc. so I could finish the thing.
Although I probably won't be doing this blanket again, I did enjoy it, and I'm really glad I made the effort to add the border as I think it really makes the project work.
Here's the finished blanket :-
I actually finished this before Christmas, but have been hanging on to it for a while as I didn't want it to go missing in the Christmas post, especially as it needs to go to Dubai and I know from experience that their post can take quite a while to arrive. It will be sent very soon and I'll have everything crossed hoping it gets there in one piece.
