A blanket for Ellie

Beverly stayed with us on Saturday night and when I showed her my lovely new yarns ~ and pointed out how diligently I was using up what I already had 😉~ she declared that I had a "problem" like I was some sort of addict!  What a bloody cheek.....especially since she's always more than happy to get yet another crocheted blanket or dishcloth courtesy of my "yarn addiction" 😂

 

Anyhoo, the stash-busting continues with using up those odd balls of Stylecraft and Scheepjes yarns ~ here's the finished blanket for Arthur's big sister, Ellie.  I used the Cosy Stripe Blanket pattern from Lucy at Attic 24.  It's a simple but effective pattern of two rows of plain treble alternated with two rows of granny stripes.  It worked up satisfyingly quickly and I soon had the perfect little-girl sized snuggle blanket.

I used Lucy's Cosy Blanket Edging to finish it off which I confess I'm not entirely happy with to be honest, although it does look pretty.  The pattern calls for two treble crochets (US double crochet) to be made around the posts of each stitch at the end of the rows, i.e. the sides of the blanket.  I found that when I used the same size hook as I did to make the body of the blanket (I used a 5mm) the sides were looking decidedly "wavy", so in order to follow the pattern as it was written I changed to a 4mm hook to see if that tightened things up at all.  It didn't really make a tremendous amount of difference, and when I worked across the top and bottom of the blanket the smaller size hook pulled those stitches in somewhat.  What I should have done was to go with my first instinct and do what I usually do when edging blankets with treble stitches, which is to alternate one with two around the posts of the side stitches.  I don't know if it's just the way I crochet but I find that this does tend to keep my sides straight.

Hopefully when the blanket has been washed a couple of times those pesky sides will settle down a tad!