Charity Blankie Number 2!

On to my second charity blanket :)

I already showed you these yarns that I got from a stash. I have no idea what brand they are or anything, but they feel like a soft acrylic and I liked the colour twists. If you like the twisty-colour look though, I'd suggest giving Stylecraft a try - I keep seeing their Summer Breeze yarns in the shop. An acrylic/cotton blend, I haven't used Summer Breeze before, but I have smooshed the yarn balls and they seem beautifully soft, as well as coming in a gorgeous selection of colours. If I had a baby to make for I would definitely be buying up this yarn and giving it a go :)

With there not being much yarn in either colour, I knew I would have to do something simple, using just a pop of colour. I wasn’t sure whether to use them individually or mix them up. Some thought about this, and I decided to use them each for their own blanket – keep it simple! – and then if there is leftover yarn, I can mix it up if it feels right :)

Beginning with the turquoisy one, I tried for a little while to come up with an interesting pattern. However, I was also keen just to get started, so once again keeping it simple I decided to go for a traditional granny square, with the first round only in the coloured yarn. A cute little pop of colour in the centres :)  Around the outside of the granny square  I added a solid colour row of doubles, just to sort of outline the squares. My plan was to join all the squares using double crochet in white, so that the turquoise outline would be set against white as well (if that makes sense!)

I liked how this looked, but as I was going along I started to have a wobble about whether there would be enough white. As this was all stash yarn, there was no way for me to find the right white in order to buy more if needed, so I had to come up with another idea if I wanted to be able to make a finished blanket!

First of all, an easy way to minimise the use of white was to not use it for joining. I therefore decided to frog all of the turquoise double crochet from the outside of the squares, and I will instead use this yarn to join the squares at the end – yarn saver number 1, done!

Second, I decided to mix up the square centres a bit. I liked the look of the simple colour + shape in the middle of a white square, and I can do this again for other blankets, but I can’t afford to run out of white this time! I therefore used some of the frogged turquoise to make 1- and 2-round grannies, to be followed by a round of the twisty-coloured yarn, and finished off with white.

I can then mix these all up when it comes to sewing the blanket together. It won’t be the same as the original effect I was after, but I still think it will be quite cute, what do you reckon? :)