Simply Stripes

After spending so long on a complicated crochet blanket made up of hundreds of tiny pieces made into slightly less tiny pieces and then into slightly less tiny pieces again before being attached together, I was craving a really simple project which wouldn't require planning or much thought and would just roll off the hook in a straightforward sort of manner. Stripes! I thought, stripes are nice and easy going, versatile, colourful and beautiful, just what I needed.

The colour palette for this new blanket was picked off of the Wool Warehouse website from their coloured images- a dangerous game I know but the sudden urgent need to purchase wool was quite demanding and I couldn't find my wool colour chart in time. Some colours I remembered from the Log Cabin blanket so I chose favourites from there, mingled with some new colours I thought I would try. It's a very sweet colour scheme, nothing offensive (this time), with some colours teetering on the edge of pastel, contrasted with bright, bold, berry colours. The mental image for this one is a stripe of beautiful colour, separated with lashings of cream. Yes I saw this blanket quite vividly in my mind and the excitement, whilst waiting for the wool to arrive, was huge!!

The wool is my favourite 100% acrylic Stylecraft Special DK which is soft and versatile, not scratchy like various other brands of acrylic yarn, plus in comes in the most amazing, intense colours. The chosen colours are:
Top row from left: Boysenberry * Cream * Parchment * Apricot *
Bottom row from left: Soft Rose * Fuchsia Purple * Sage * Duck Egg *

The plan was simple, a starting chain of 198 stitches plus 2 for turning, followed by a row of double crochet, and then an initial row of treble clusters separated by chain stitches to start off... the granny stripe blanket! All further rows from now on are worked in the chain gaps and you can simply glide along the blanket adding colour after colour until you wish to stop. There really is nothing stopping you from making this blanket as long as you wish, you could keep going until you can wrap a house in it, or maybe when it fits a single bed.

In my experience of making striped blankets before, the first 30 or so rows seem to fly by and work up really quickly, but when you get further into it, there is an illusion that makes it look like you aren't adding any fullness until you have crocheted past that point, and suddenly, it is a full size blanket!

Each colour is worked up in two neat rows, seperated each time by two rows of cream which is giving it a very girly effect. I still haven't decided whether these colours should randomly appear, or if once I have used all of my colours, I should go back to the beginning and follow the initial order all the way through. I shall cross that bridge when I get to it, although my instinct is saying to go random.

It is currently joining the cat, the geometric blanket and myself on the chair in the evenings, all snuggled peaceably together in front of the laptop watching DVDs or The Crown on Netflix, have any of you been watching that? It's fascinating!
So this is what I shall be doing in the run up to Christmas, snuggling down and striping away!