Little things finished

Here in the West of England we are enjoying warm weather at the moment, although as is normal, two or three hot days mean that thunderstorms will follow.  They followed at around 3 am this morning, and, although I have a hearing impairment which means I normally sleep through loud noises quite happily, I certainly heard these storms as they passed over.

Warm weather makes crocheting full size blankets a bit of a challenge, so I have put the current aran monster to one side.  It is roughly 30 inches by 58 inches at the moment, and I'm aiming to get it about another 12 -15 inches bigger all round.  

We did have a few cooler days at the start of July, which meant I was able to finish off the other aran blanket; it was a corner-to-corner, made with 2 strands of coned yarn.  I do like the stripe design of this one, and will be going through my remaining cones to see whether I can plan another.

But on to the smaller things that have been finished; firstly the fingerless gloves: 3 pairs in 3 different sizes, all made from the same pattern, and using different combinations of coned yarn.

And then the baby blanket made from 4 ply.  I pondered for quite a while over the layout of this blanket, sorted one out, and then sewed it up completely differently by mistake!  Never mind, it looks fine as it is and at 33 inches square will keep a baby cosy and warm.

Next will be another baby blanket, this time for a family member; my niece is expecting a baby boy in October, and as their family surname is MacLeod, I had the rash idea of making a tartan blanket for him in the clan tartan.  I have ordered the wool, but will have to make the pattern up as I go.  Watch this space!

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!

Blankets off to their destination

Stacked on the ironing board are the seven blankets I have made so far for the 60 Million Trebles project.  Lady Dorothea Mousevaark is perched on top, inspecting the pile.

Today I drove to Taunton to deliver them to Refugee Aid From Taunton (RAFT) who co-ordinate and dispatch aid via various charities to refugees across the world.  I had read on RAFT's Facebook page that they were desperate for donations of blankets, and also summer clothes for refugees in Greece, so I was able to turn out some clothes and light shoes to take along, as well as some toiletries.

At RAFT, Lesley was delighted to receive my donation.  In return, she asked me to take some wool that had been donated to make some more blankets.  How could I refuse???  More blankets coming up!