Favourite so far?

As this year is my Year of the Blanket, I have been looking at different patterns and styles beyond my normal Granny Afghan or Corner to Corner designs.  Looking on the Crochet Crowd website in March, I found a new pattern called Modern Chevron Afghan, by Jeanne Steinhilber.

It appealed because of its unusual construction with 5 diamonds (OK, squares joined point-to-point) as the start, then colours built up around.

I had 2 large balls of Aldi Aran in bright blue that I thought would work with this pattern, and some oddments of different colours that I could use to add colourful accents.  I started with 5 bright blue squares, then added the first band of colours.

I did a few rows of blue, then another band of colours, meaning this to be one end of the blanket.  Turning it around, I carried on in the other direction, with more colours then a long expanse of blue.

The chevron effect is really deep and interesting to work.  Somehow it made me think of Native American beadwork.

I carried on until the blanket was long enough to cover a single bed (or to put it another way, when I had used up the 800 grams of  aran yarn), and then I put a final band of colours in place to finish it off.

The pattern has no borders, but mine didn't look finished, so after consulting my Loving Hands friends, I crocheted a narrow band of navy blue down each side.  I was worried that I would run out of yarn, but there was just enough.  So this is the finished blanket:

It weighs just over a kilo, and is destined for Operation Orphan's Keep a Child Warm project.  I found it very enjoyable to make as it looks really bright and cheery, and it grew really quickly.  Overall it is probably my favourite of the 9 blankets I have made so far this year.

Let's go fly a kite!

In the UK, next week is Dementia Awareness Week (May 14 - 20).  My dear Mum developed dementia towards the end of her life, and was cared for very kindly and lovingly in a home for people with that awful disease.  Last year I started volunteering with our local branch of the Alzheimer's Society, and on Thursday 17th May our local Dementia Action Alliance are holding an awareness day in the Bay cafe, which is on Weston-super-Mare sea front.

Our theme is 'Let's go fly a kite', which is of course the title of a song from the Disney film of Mary Poppins.  We have been thinking all things kites for several weeks.  I thought that knitted kite badges would be a good awareness raising idea, and after several different attempts, came up with a basic mitred square with a crocheted tail and small button for decoration.

They each have a badge back or a safety pin sewn on the back.

I've done them in variegated yarn, glitter yarn, snowflake yarn, tweedy yarn made from several strands of coned yarn, and some of them are sitting in their box (above) waiting for Thursday.  Several other people are making these too, so we should have quite a wide choice available.

Laura, the manager at the Scrapstore, has made us this marvellous fish kite from offcuts of hot-air ballon material, which Cameron Balloons kindly donate to the Scrapstore.  She has also made several others which we can use to draw attention to our event on the sea front (it is always breezy on our sea front!)

We thought it would be good for people to make or decorate kites for us to display on the day.  Luckily the Scrapstore has loads of sticky-back plastic in a range of colours, so we have cut out lots of stars and hearts, and I've been busy cutting A5 card into kite shapes.  In my stash I had an amazing ball of yarn that is like ribbon decorated with bows, just perfect for kite tails.

And in best Blue Peter tradition, here's one I made earlier! Can you see the tiny little bows on the tail?

We have a large piece of netting all ready to display the decorated kites.  We are now keeping our fingers crossed for a fine day.  If you are in the area, please do come and join us!