Man Blanket

Hello, I promised I would be back to show you this blanket, which you saw a sneek peak of a little while ago. Do you remember this blanket that I made a long time ago? Well, I put this blanket on the back of the grey sofa and never really loved it but my Mother in Law kept commenting on it so off it went to her house. My Father in Law has been unwell over the last few months and he was using the blanket a lot during the day to keep him warm. I had some of the cream wool left over in my stash and was wanting a project to use it up. I also had this UFO from a very long time ago that my Mum brought over a couple of months ago when she was having a clear out.

Way back in the 1980s when I was probably about fifteen, I started making a knitted skirt. Yes. A knitted skirt. They must have been trendy back then (or maybe not, I wasn't a cool teenager!) but I had got over two thirds of the way into this project before discarding it through boredom - who could blame me? I decided that it was such a shame to waste good quality aran wool and ripped it back until I had eight balls of lovely wool. Added to the remainder of the cream aran wool (about 150g) I decided I had enough for a lap blanket. This was going to be a chunky blanket, a Man Blanket.

I reckoned that if it was going to be a Man Blanket, it would not be needing any fancy patterns so I started off with 2 rounds of cream and finished off each square with navy. I then realised that I had a bit more of the cream wool than I originally thought and in order to use it all up, I had better make some squares with larger cream middles. Once I had joined 16 squares together, I used the rest of the wool to make stripes at each end - I wanted a rectangular blanket which could be folded in half and still be big enough to drape over the knee. Just a simple border of double crochet and shell edging at each end and it was complete.

The edges are a bit wonky but Man Blankets are allowed to be a bit wonky sometimes. Honest.

Very small amounts of wool were left over so I am pleased I made such a huge dent in the yarn stash. And my Father in Law is very pleased he has another blanket to keep him warm in the evening. Here endeth the story of the Man Blanket. Hope you enjoyed it and it inspires you to make a Man Blanket too!

Last week I was extremely pleased to find I had won a blog giveaway. The lovely Emma from Oooh Betty sent me a parcel full of treats.

A Staffordshire jar in my favourite colours. It's gorgeous, I love it.

Inside the jar was a whole range of goodies.

The hankie has made its way into my youngest daughter's hanky stash, the doily, buttons and beautiful ribbon on vintage spool have been squirrelled away into my sewing cabinet for future use. And the love birds are now key rings - one for the patio doors in the lounge and one for the back door in the kitchen. I see them every day and they make me smile. As for the jar, it is on the new worktop next to the kettle. I will get some more shots of it once the kitchen is complete. We were looking at wall tiles at the weekend although we didn't see anything suitable. We only have about 2.5 square metres to cover, what with the kitchen window and the splashback behind the hob there are only small bits to tile here and there. Large wall tiles are in fashion at the moment and so many of the tiles are too big for the area we have. Only one or two tiles would remain uncut if we used anything bigger than about 20x25cm. We will keep looking but I think we have come to the conclusion that metro brick tiles are the way to go.

I have a free day tomorrow so I am going to see if I can sort out what my next crochet project is. I have messed around so much with the milk cotton and not come up with anything that takes my fancy. It may well be put to one side until a good idea pops into my head. Hope you all have a fab day tomorrow. xxx