My Sweet Pea - blanket


This is my first Attic 24 blanket. Attic 24 blogger Lucy has designed  many crocheted blanket. This is the fifth CAL (Crochet-A-Long). I have been following Lucy's blog throughout my Crochet Mania time, for 8 years. Her blog was the first blogs I came across when I started my own. I met Lucy personally last fall at the Yarndale event, you can read about it from here.

When Lucy released the color scheme for this blanket last October, I couldn't help but to participate in the CAL. Oh, what colors! Loving it !!  I also knew where this blanket would end. To my upcoming summer oasis, to my glazed terrace, my summer crochet corner.

From here you can read about Lucy's thoughts about the blanket, and here you will find all the instructions for making the blanket.


The yarns for the blanket came on sale on Tuesday, 27 November 2018 at Wool Warehouse. I ordered the yarns right away and they arrived at my door in a week. The yarn used is Stylecraft Special DK, which is 100% acrylic. One ball has 100 g and 295 meters. The hook / needle recommendation is 4 mm. That yarn has an incredibly wide color map. There are 92 different colors !! 92 !! (The color map can be found here.) To this blanket, Lucy had chosen 15 lovely colors to match the sweet pea colors. The only thing that I was worried about was the fact that the yarn is 100% acrylic. I've never done anything with acrylic before and it has a bad reputation. But, however, the blanket was nice to  crochet despite the acrylic, it seemed to slide comfortably on the hook. It remains to be seen how the blanket withstands the use, but at least it was warm while making it.

Every Friday, Lucy released order for 15 stripes (ie 30 rows) on her blog. So every night / day (if you wanted to keep up with the CAL), you had to crochet at least two colors (ie four layers), except one day three colors.

I prepared for the project by making a small sample of each color tone and small name tags with the color name and color code. Lovely colors, right?


On Friday, 4 January 2019, the CAL then took off. In the evening, at home, I made two samples to find out what hook I should take to make the blanket (according to Lucy's instructions). I made the first sample with a 3.5 mm hook (lower model in the picture) and another 4.0 mm with a hook (upper model). There was no significant difference in size between the models. Both had a width of about 14-14.5 cm. According to Lucy's instruction, a good sized swatch is about 15 cm. I ended up with a 3.5 mm hook for the crochet because I liked it more. That hook size is my favorite anyway!



The same evening, of course, I started to crochet the blanket. I was little bit nervous about the starting chain (212 chain loops and one row of single crochet was required), but when that was done, it was easy peasy! That evening, we watched two movies (!) And I crocheted four colors (ie eight rows).




The first week's crocheting went really smoothly. I got all the required 15 colors (30 rows) on Tuesday evening. On Monday, I made 3 rows at work :) Then I just waited for the Friday to continue.




The next two weeks went just as smoothly because  I had made the necessary rows on Wednesday.


Week 3 was completed on Thursday (24.1.2019). Now the blanket had to be taken outside to enjoy the cold weather. Oh, that blanket is just wonderful!


The rows of week 4 were completed, late (!)  on Friday (1.2.2019). But then I seemed to speed up because week 5 and 6 were completed on time on Thursday. Then I had a pause week (7) because I had completed all the rows on time and note! all the threads were also weaved in. By the way, it was a very good decision to weave in all the threads immediately.
I am very proud of myself for doing that :)

Then, at week 8, a border was made. Luckily, it had a full week, because it was quite laborious. Below are three rows of border. The border was made in seven different colors.


The blanket was finally completed on February 28, 2019, probably just before midnight! Wonderful, oh so-wonderful Sweet Pea lining was ready! The blanket is 196 cm long and the width is 110 cm.


Then finally, spring arrived and the we started to decorate out new summer oasis.
Sweet Pea was the first part of the decoration. Oh, I just adore my new blanket!

I will be posting more about the summer oasis and crochet decorations in the upcoming weeks!







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