Thursday 22 May 2014

Glastonbury - The Edge of The Edge




Well, I’m pretty excited to be sharing this after a few days of work, but I think that my edging plan for the Glastonbury Blanket is working out, and that it won’t be long before I have a finished blankie to share and then rehome!

Last time I showed you Glasto the edge was looking like this, with a few turquoise rounds to start things off:



I had been thinking about a big colourful edging, but I really wanted to do something lacy and fancy, and I thought I might just have a little idea for how to combine the two, and here it is…

I chose edging 93 from Edie Eckman’s ‘Around the Corner Crochet Borders’, as it had the lacy sort of feel I was after, while not requiring an excessive amount of rounds to create it (I’m aiming to have it all finished for the end of the month, when I will be seeing my Aunt anyway. She won’t be expecting it so soon, so I reckon it will be a great surprise!):



For the extra colour, I was inspired by the blanket patches themselves, specifically the way you first add a chain round to the circle motif, which you then crochet onto in order to square it off (and no doubt I was inspired subconsciously by various things on Pinterest – I’ve noticed loads of similar ideas since I thought of this!) So, I next added a round of chain stitches in a contrasting colour to the previous Granny round:

Excuse the crappy colours on this photo - it was taken late at night under dodgy artificial light, and I can't correct it any better than this :(


Then I did Granny clusters onto the chain round – they look a bit different being done onto the chain rather than into a space, but that’s ok – I think it adds to the idea that we are now off the blanket and onto the edge:

Same goes for this photo...


I started these first couple of rounds at the same time, doing a bit of chaining then a bit of Grannying all the way round, so that I could see straightaway if it wasn’t working - rather than after doing a few full rounds! While I was doing this, I extended the idea of doing a check before fully committing, and I built up one small tester section all the way to the lacy bit:


For some reason the deep purple colour doesn't show up very well - it's much nicer than the pic suggests!


My gut feeling about this tester section was that the depth of the chain-Granny section was too similar to the lacy border section, and dwarfed it a little. I thought I either needed to make a much wider section of chains and Granny clusters so that it felt like a different part of the blanket onto which a nice lacy border was added, or I needed to make it a tiny bit narrower so that it didn’t compete so much with the lacy bit (have I explained that ok? I know what I mean but I don’t know if I’ve expressed it very well!) The blanket is now pretty big and time is pretty short, so making it narrower won, and I decided to leave off the final chain-Granny combo. I had originally imagined making the colour bit much wider, so the border isn’t as colourful as I’d pictured, but I still think this adds a bit of interest. Froggy certainly thought so, and he hopped by to watch me work :)  

I heard a little thud at the patio door, and look who was there!


The next day, as I added the final, Bright Pink, chain round, I thought that this almost worked as a border itself! 



I had worked out that an even number of Granny clusters was required as the base for the edging pattern, and my turquoise clusters were an odd number. 



I therefore added a normal Granny round in the Emperor (the deep purple colour I'm using for the edging) to increase the cluster count by 1 to make an odd number (adding a chain-Granny combo increases the cluster count by 2). The brilliant thing about making the blanket square, is that I only needed to do any calculations for 1 side – yay!! The need for this extra round was a bit of a blessing, as when I had been making my tester section, I hadn’t been so keen on the lacy bit going straight onto the Turquoise. When I added a Granny round in the Emperor upon which to start the lacy bit, I thought it looked much better - so it worked out perfectly!



With the Emperor Granny round on top of the chain-Granny combos, I again felt that this could be a good simple edging just as it was:



But I wanted the lacy bit!! So I began with round 1 (of course…) and it created a nice open shell edging, which seemed like another good, simple edging technique I could use in future:



I’m enjoying the edging, it’s a straightforward pattern that is easy to hook, and I think will look really effective. And while the maths in the book seemed a little daunting, when I just went ahead and applied the pattern to the blanket for my test section it was actually really simple to ignore the stitch count altogether! A full repeat just requires 3 spaces across 2 Granny clusters (before, middle, after), and each corner requires a single Granny cluster either side of the corner chain (2 clusters in total). And therefore any even number of Granny clusters – so easy counting!

So, here it is as of yesterday (it's too gloomy and soggy out for a decent picture today), with just 3 more rounds left to go to build up the lacy edging pattern. I’m so excited to see this pattern come together, and I think the colour/lacy compromise is working (even if I haven’t made it quite so wide and colourful as I’d imagined). I’d love to hear if you think it works too – I love a second opinion! 



I can’t wait to share this with you again, but as a finished blanket :)




4 comments:

  1. That is brilliant, I agree you can easily get away with leaving it as an edging at several of the rows, but, the full on lacey bit will look fab. Can't wait to see it....you must crochet in your sleep you get so much done xx

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    1. Haha - it's funny you say that, I'm not working at the moment so I do stay up pretty late some nights crocheting away!! The lacy bit is coming along - I love it!! Can't wait to see the finished thing and share it :)

      Dxx

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  2. Hi Debbie, I LOVE your blanket and the border looks brilliant so far.
    Thank you for linking....I'm glad my tutorial was a help.
    Jacquie x

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    1. No problem, and thank you! I think I will have a finished blanket to share after the weekend - I'm very excited about it!

      Your tutorial was perfect, it has definitely fixed my problem with ruffley edgings :) Thank you!

      Dx

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