Blanketing Along

It's been over a week since I last updated my Blanket Along progress!

This is the first time I have joined something like this, and the first time I've been active on Ravelry. I'm enjoying it though, it's lovely to see the other blankets taking shape - Sandra at Cherry Heart has finished hers already!  One of my favourites from the group is this one by Cuppa Crochet, a lovely granny blanket in gorgeous colours.


Being part of this group is giving me a real boost of enthusiasm for my long-neglected project, and it feels great to know that it will get good use when I am visiting The Strand - this Willow pattern blanket is destined to be an outdoors blanket, for picnicking, or just lounging outside :)

It has been a very 'bitty' journey to get this blanket going. First it started out as a few random colours:

It soon became clear that this wasn't working, so I separated out the colours to become 2 different blankets. More yarn got added to the neon colours, and they turned out like this:

Then had some black added:

But I wasn't happy with these. Not at all. So I frogged the multi-coloured yarn and started again making more centre motifs:

I didn't like black with these motifs, and I didn't think white was a good idea for a blanket that would spend its life on the floor, but I didn't have a better idea...

So I kept going, making these centres while I tried to decide how to continue the blanket. 

My favourites were the ones with the first 2 rounds in the multi-colour yarn making these cute little circles, so I once again frogged the motifs that had this multicolour yarn, so I could make more centre circles:

I soon had quite a stack of these!

And then I asked over at the Blanket Along group for advice about what colour to use to complete the squares.

I got a few answers: someone suggested another neon colour, but that didn't feel quite right to me for this particular project.

Someone else suggested grey - I liked this idea, and searching 'neon and grey' on Pinterest threw up loads of great images. Just my cup of tea!

To complicate things, someone else suggested navy, and when I searched 'neon and navy' on Pinterest, there were also loads of really great images!! (and some lovely outfits!)

I couldn't decide between grey or navy, so the only thing for it was to head for the craft shop - I don't have an LYS here - and see what I thought in the flesh. After much deliberation, I decided on a couple of things:

First, there wasn't a nice enough grey in the shop - the best shade was in the scratchiest, most plasticky yarn; while the softer yarn had a shade that didn't quite work.

Second, I came to the conclusion that with the greys, I prefer them to be the main colour with smaller neon highlights (I have a plan in mind to use this scheme!) rather than the background to lots of neon.

On the other hand, there was a really dark navy in the softer yarn, and that did seem to work well as a background to each of the neon colours I had.

So, after all this changing my mind and changing my design, and frogging and re-hooking, I came up with this: I am now going with only the Willow motifs that have the multicolour centre circles, and they are having a navy background - finally, decision made!!

The solid-colour Willow motifs can be saved for another something else...



So how does the blanket look with its navy background? Well, I'm less than halfway through, joining-on-the-go to save time and yarn at the end. But here it is so far - a few more days and I reckon it will be complete!

 

And I'm finally pretty happy with it!