I came to my senses and ditched the mint green from my misshapen disaster blanket, whew. Also I ripped back three rows to start with the smaller hook sooner, and it worked. The blanket is now on the straight and narrow with no noticeable difference in shell size. And it's longer now, woot!
It's a whole foot long, in fact.
That's two weeks' work you're looking at. 45 minutes to crochet one colour stripe, and 45 minutes to run in the ends on three stripes, not that I'm watching the clock (I'm totally watching the clock.) I am permitting myself three stripes a day because it turns out, more than three hours in an armchair crocheting is not great for my eyes or hands or overall energy.
With the mint gone, I no longer have enough colour flexibility to follow Lucy's pattern (The Hydrangea Blanket), so I took these pix while taking stock of how I want to balance what's left before making a less flawed blanket for my sofa, because this one is now going to be a lap blanket for moi. Once I realized that, had I been paying attention to Lucy's pattern, I would have done two rows in each colour before changing, but had run in so many ends I couldn't rip back and redo, it was a done deal.
But there is a second reason to shift this project's focus and plan for a second blanket.
DIGRESSION ALERT:
There is a difference in some of these colours based on where the yarn was made, which impacts my stripes.
Stylecraft Special DK used to be produced in a mill in Turkey, where it was loosely spun and shiny. Now it's coming from a Yorkshire mill, where it's made matte and slightly tighter, so that it appears thinner. As far as I know, all the colours are the same from both mills, but that sheen - whoa. It is really noticeable in person.
Even in the picture above it shows, I feel... that beige just to he left of the pink, in the lower right corner? That's the shiny one. The pink is matte. The yellow in the middle, and the navy blue to its left, and the repeat of the beige - all from Turkey.
Both yarns are perfectly fine and I'm really enjoying them, but ugh. Mixed in one project? Not the blanket I dreamed of.
For my money, the Yorkshire yarn is nicer, because it looks a lot like wool, even though it's not as soft as the shiny one, which also has a lot more (unwanted in acrylic) halo. But right now, Wool Warehouse doesn't have all the colours in stock as Yorkshire mill yarns. What they do have is a delightful ordering system where you can specify which dye lot you want in any particular colour. The lot numbers that begin with MY are made in Yorkshire. So I have reordered all the colours I can that *are* Yorkshire-milled, and that's what's going into the official big blanket.
END DIGRESSION
The upshot of all this: I am going to be crocheting this blanket FOREVER. I'm only one-third of the way through! Here's the visual: whatever is a brown tabletop and not stripey blankie is territory I have yet to cover.
See what I mean? FOREVER.
On the upside, I've figured out how to crochet without hurting my bad arm. But it's a good thing I've also cast on a new knitting project because it could get really boring for you, watching a blanket grow five inches a week.
My current takeaway on crocheting a blanket is similar to that of sock knitting: it's ridiculous because it is so much easier and more practical, not to mention WAY cheaper, to buy ready made. But it's also brilliant because it is completely addictive and the end result is super dreamy. Even at its current size, this blanket is so squishy and nice, I know I'm not ever going to share it with anybody else!
Okay, I'm off to watch trains, as one does. Hope you have a wonderful weekend lined up and thank you for spending this part of it with me! See you next Saturday, when I will try very hard not to show more blankie pictures.
Not even in neck roll form, ha!
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