Look how big it is!
This blanket is the first thing I've ever crocheted (if you don't include the small practice square I made when learning the technique), and the largest thing I've ever made (I've knitted a couple of blankets before but they were much smaller than this).
One of the lovely ladies at my old knitting club taught me how to make a simple granny square and I just kept crocheting until the blanket was big enough for a double bed. It's a slightly distorted square but it looks "just square enough" not to look strange when it's lying on a bed.
The sunshine makes the colours seem a bit brighter than they are to the naked eye - this photo is a bit more
accurate:
Lots and lots of happy hours went into the blanket - towards the end, it took over an hour to crochet a single round (I really don't want to do the maths and work out how long it must have taken in total).
It was a very relaxing project, not least because crocheting it all in one piece meant I only had a few ends to sew in when it was finished (just the strands which were left each time I switched colours). Its size did mean that it wasn't the world's most easily portable craft project though, and I had to take a break from it during the warmer weeks of summer as it was just too hot to sit with a great big blanket on my lap! (I started it in May and finally finished sewing in the ends in September).
I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and I'm still a big fan of the colours I chose - the umming and aahhing in the shop while I was trying to find a selection of colours that worked well together (and the eye-rolls and slightly impolite comments I received from the shop staff, especially when I realised I needed to pop to a cash machine before paying as the yarn ended up costing a bit more than I'd expected as I'd chosen so many colours) was totally worth it.
I didn't plan the colour arrangement totally in advance, but I did plan each repeat of the seven colours. I stitched one row / two rows / one row / three rows, and made sure to arrange the colours so I ended up with a balance of the different shades throughout the blanket and so I avoided creating the same colour combinations over and over. I had planned on finishing with a double row of the navy blue, but alas I ran out of that shade / batch number of yarn & couldn't get hold of any more! (If my memory serves me well, I think I bought two balls of each shade?) Ah well.
I definitely want to try making another crochet blanket sometime, and I'd very much recommend it if you're thinking of trying to make one yourself. If a crochet novice like me can manage it, so can you :)
