Ice Ice... ...Granny...?

Today has seen me out in the sunshine again, doing voluntary work with the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Ranger. I took a few photos while we were working, so I will sort them out and show you the results of our labours later on :)

In the meantime, I have a few photos to share that are already good to go, as I have finished yet another charity blanket for Ty Hafan!

This one is a simple granny square design in icy white and aqua – Ice Granny anyone? ;)

I had originally planned to do all of the squares with a single round of colour at the centre making a little + shape, with the remaining rounds all white. 

No plan survives first contact though, and the white ran out… As this was some of my mum’s random stash yarn, and didn’t have a label, I wasn’t able to get a good match for the white, so I had to change my plan… I played around with the coloured centres and added more colour, so that less white was required:

I did manage to get enough squares for a small cot blanket – although the payoff was that I now didn’t have enough coloured yarn for a decent border! Oh well, that’s the risk when you’re working with leftovers :)

I had a couple of ideas floating around in my mind for how to lay out these squares, but last week while I was working on them at my mum’s knitting group, I came up with this idea:

The densest-coloured ones in the middle (ideally there would have been 3 instead of 2, but not having enough yarn prevented this):

Then these were surrounded by less-coloured squares:

And finally the original squares I had made:

I think it looks ok?

This is also the first time that I have used double crochet for joining. Normally if I’m crocheting together then I will make the final rounds all the same colour, and use this same colour for slip stitching them together. The beauty of using double crochet though is that you can use any colour you fancy (the down-sides are that you use more yarn, and for me I’m not so keen on having a taller seam), and I quite like the effect in this blanket of having a coloured join :)

To edge the blanket I had to keep it really simple, as I really was down to scraps of yarn by this point… I did a round of doubles in the solid aqua colour, the same as I had used for the joining. Then I finished off with a round of doubles in the variegated aqua/white yarn. This was close, I had only about 10cms left over when I had finished! That was a big sigh of relief when I got to the end without running out!

So there we have it, Ice Granny, now charity blanket number 3!

Ta Dah!