Little things

I seem to have spent a lot of time lately working on large blankets.  When I found a large bag of 4 ply in among the yarn that RAFT gave me to make more blankets, I was rather pleased, because 4 ply to me says baby blankets, which are a lot smaller than the ones I have been doing.  There were four colours of Patons Diploma 4 ply, a lovely soft yarn.  As a bonus, I also had a couple of balls of the same yarn in a fifth colour in my stash.  Small squares were needed, so I went for a simple approach:

Just a plain treble crochet square.  But what colour order should the squares be set out in?  Decisions, decisions....

I'm probably going to go with the top order.  The squares need a white frame to border them too:

So far I have 15 colour squares, 3 with borders.  So I need to do another 10 colour squares and a lot of borders:

The finished blanket will be about 32 inches square, just right for the baby packs that RAFT put together to go to refugee camps.

Another little project has been to make small, warm items for a charity called Muddy Footprints, which distributes them in impoverished areas of Bulgaria.  I have been using coned yarn with a high wool content to make fingerless gloves.  The pale green is two strands of 2 ply Alpaca yarn while the multicolour is 4 ply super wash 100%wool.  These should be very warm to wear.  The pattern I am using is a very simple one I found on Ravelry called Easy Fingerless Mitts by Calypso Knits.  Although it is written for dpns, I am using the magic loop method on a circular needle.

By the way, there is also a large corner to corner blanket on the go, but it has been a bit too warm to work on that one much.  However, today has been cold and wet, so it might get dragged out this evening for a little more work!