A quick crochet catch-up

Recently, I've been crocheting two king size blankets which will be wedding presents for two friends getting married later this year. I alternate between the two if I get a bit bored with one of the patterns or the colours (although I do love both).  Both blankets are made continuously, rather than in smaller pieces which are sewn together later.  Whilst this does mean less sewing up (I hate sewing), it also means that the blanket gets big rather quickly and has to be a sofa project rather than one which is more transportable.  So I've needed a couple of quicker and smaller projects.

A while ago, I made this dinosaur and posted a photo on Facebook.  A Brownie leader friend of mine said how much she liked it, so much so that she went out and bought a book on how to crochet and some hooks as well as the issue of Simply Crochet the pattern was in, just so she could teach herself to make one!  However, in the end she asked me to make one for her, which I did - I think crochet is on her list of things to do in 2015, she just didn't want to wait any longer for a dinosaur!

I made all the bits, stuffed them, and sewed together.  It was only when I went and got my dinosaur to see how I did the eyes and nostrils that I realised just how fat the second one was!  My light blue dinosaur is on the left, and the second dinosaur is on the right.  He's huge!  My friend loves him though, has called him Porky and proudly showed him off to lots of people when I gave him to her at a Guiding meeting!  The head is also positioned differently, and the arms are shorter - apparently there was an error in the pattern, so for the first one I made there are too many rounds, making the arms longer.  Not sure which one I prefer, though.  I like how they each appear to have their own personalities.

Thin dinosaur, fat dinosaur!

Look at that face!

I've since made two more dinosaurs as Christmas presents, think I've just about got the hang of them now.  Although I still hate sewing on those fiddly spines.

One of my friends is having a baby in the new year (well, I expect quite a few of my friends will be having babies in 2015, but this is the only one I know about so far!) and so I made a blanket.  This was a lovely blanket to make, it's made up of 90 3-round granny squares.  I used whatever bits I had in my yarn box, it's all Stylecraft Special DK, in a whole host of colours.  As each square didn't require much yarn at all, it was a good project for using up those small balls of yarn which seem to take up so much room.  For the first time I used JAYG (join as you go) to attach the squares, rather than sew them up at the end.  I used this Attic24 tutorial, which was easy to get the hang of.

The border was one I'd seen quite a while ago on Sandra's blog, and had bookmarked.  It's very straightforward and I'm so pleased with how it looks.  I'd finished making this blanket a while ago, and thought I was just waiting to wrap it.  Turns out it needed blocking, which makes items look so much better, but it is such a faff, I don't like doing it, and that is clearly why I'd forgotten about it. 

I had no intention of getting the ironing board out just to steam block a small blanket, so I folded up a towel on one of the kitchen worktops instead.  I then gently stretched the blanket into shape and put pins in the corners as well as evenly spaced along the sides.  Steam blocking is incredibly straightforward, just hold the iron very close to BUT NOT TOUCHING the crochet and press the steam button.  The steam magically makes the corners lovely and pointy.  I was once blocking some triangular bunting, and I sneezed as I pressed the steam button, thus dropping the iron on to the crochet and flattening it entirely.  I was so sad.  Thankfully it was only one triangle so was quickly remade, but it was frustrating nonetheless!

It's not the largest of kitchens

Lovely straight edges!

I really like this blanket, and I think I managed not to get two squares of the same colour touching.  I tried, anyway!

This photo was taken in daylight (not in my kitchen!) and shows the border's colours much more accurately.  I loved crocheting this border, it's very simple and yet very pretty.  The whole project has meant my box of oddments of yarn is now considerably less full and this blanket didn't cost me any more money to make! Excellent all round, really.

Completely unrelated, but over Christmas we ate a lot of biscuits and cake (who didn't?!) and my absolute favourite had to be these mini Party Rings! So cute.

I've got one Christmas present left to make (whoops), a Dr Who scarf for Ben.  More on that later, I still have 110 ends to sew in...