"THE" BLANKET

So, you may or may not know that knitting is kind of my thing. I learnt just after I had Beau and the first big project I embarked upon was a huge blanket made up of lots of little squares (you can read more about that here) and ever since then I have rarely been without a little project in progress. If you follow me in instagram, you'll no doubt have seen me posting photos of the various things I've been working on. 

When we decided to try for another baby, naturally I started thinking about all the wonderful things I could knit for it, and impatient as ever, I had to start on something right away. Yeah that's right, before I was even pregnant. I decided I would start with a blanket, and to be honest, when I first cast the stitches on the needles, I didn't entirely know where I was going with it. Did I mention that I'm impatient?!

Before too long, inspiration struck me like a sharp flick between the eyes, and I knew I had to make it a chevron blanket. You see, I'm a little chevron obsessed. It was the only choice really, so I started mapping out a pattern. As luck would have it, I had cast on the exact amount of stitches to make a perfect, evenly spaced chevron pattern so I could carry on my merry way without having to start over with more or less stitches. Call it divine intervention if you like. Maybe my knitting guardian angel (my nan) was giving me a little helping hand :o). Initially I thought I would try and do it semi intarsia style, by using individual mini skeins of wool for each of the black arrows, but after the first complete chevron stripe I realised that this was a bloody stupid idea and I was making an already fiddly pattern ten billion times fiddlier. I would have to do it all fair isle style, and just deal with the messy back later. 

  I decided to stick with my old favourites, black and off white, partly to keep it unisex and partly because it just looks so good. I used Debbie Bliss' Cashmerino Aran yarn. I have a little stash of the stuff which I bought with a little business venture in mind, so pretty much everything I knit these days gets done it that. Luckily it also happens to be the softest, most perfect yarn in the world, especially for blankets as it's a great thickness for snugly warm loveliness. 

By this point I had started having the recurring chemical pregnancies, so all the while I wasn't successfully getting pregnant, there wasn't much rush to get it finished. It became my babysitting project, by which I mean I would just take it with me when I went to babysitting jobs and do a few rows here and there in between putting children to bed, eating gross amounts of chocolate and drinking enough tea to sink a ship. 

It was slow growing for quite some time, and every now and then I would realise that I had fucked up on a row or two but it didn't matter. I just carried on and I kind of think the imperfections just add to it's handmade charm. 

Once I finally got pregnant and it seemed like it was going pretty smoothly, I got the drive to ramp up the pace a bit and started to make some real progress with it. I was never really sure how long I was going to make it. On days when I was exasperated with it, I thought I would finish when it was roughly square, but I knew that the less lazy part of me wanted it to be a decent rectangle really. I plugged on, and once I got past the square stage, I realised that I really wouldn't have to do much more to make it  a really nice size anyway. By this time, the pregnancy was still going well and I had recently found out that Santa's Little Helper is going to be a boy, so I started thinking about maybe adding in a feature stripe in colour.

I searched through my stash of Debbie Bless Cashmerino Aran but none of the colours I had were bold enough. If I was going to add colour, I wanted it to be bright and to make the whole blanket pop, otherwise it was better to leave it monochrome. I had all but gone off the idea of a feature stripe, when I popped into my local C&H fabrics store on the off chance that they might have a more lively colour in that range which would suit the role. 

They didn't have anything which stood out in the aran weight, but they did have this beautiful sunshine yellow in a lighter weight of the same yarn type. I would have to double it up so it didn't change the feel of the blanket too much...could I be bothered? While I was in there I wandered over to the fabric section, yellow yarn in hand, to see if there was anything suitable for backing the blanket with. Because I had done it fair isle, the back was covered in tiny loops of yarn which I had carried along, and I knew that as soon as little baby fingers got anywhere near it, they would find their way into the loops and pull it all out of shape. So although I didn't really want to make it any thicker than it already was, I had to back it with something to protect the loops.

It must have been divine intervention again, because from the piles and piles of fabric, out jumped the most perfect, yellow, grey and off white chevron cotton. It would look absolutely perfect, and tied in the yellow yarn like a dream. So they both came home with me, and I set about doubling up on the sunshine yellow baby cashmerino for the stripe. You can see that it's doubled up if you look closely, but I can't see the baby holding it against me forever if I'm honest.

Once the knitting was all done, it was time to sew the backing fabric on. Now like I said at the start, knitting is kind of my thing, but sewing? I haven't got a bloody clue. So I consulted the one lady I knew would have all the answers, my dear friend Eleanor Ross, textiles extraordinaire. She came over one evening and with the help of mum's sewing machine (which I still haven't given back...I think sewing might be my NEXT thing) she hemmed the fabric for me and showed me how to sew it on.

It was no easy task. You see, the big difficulty came from the fact that the cotton was completely rigid, and the knitted blanket was gloriously stretchy. Even working out what size the fabric needed to be was a nightmare. At one point, after cutting and hemming the whole thing, we put the two together and there was a good 10cm deficit in the length, and we started freaking out about what had gone so horribly wrong. Luckily, upon moving the work to the flat surface of the floor, it did still fit, just. The deficit must have come from the blanket hanging over the ironing board and stretching out.

We temporarily tacked the fabric, and pinned it all around, and got down to some serious hand stitching. This part couldn't be done on the machine because of the differing tensions of the two surfaces. The machine would have stretched the knitting out too much. I had big plans to stay up all night and just get it done, but a poorly toddler soon put pay to that idea and I had to retire to bed with him and pick it up again the next day (after he had thrown up all over my bed at 6am...nice).

Eventually, I did finish it, and I fell in love with it all over again. Like the knitted side, the hand stitching isn't perfect, but for my first attempt I was pretty chuffed with how I did. The only thing we have left to do now is to remove the temporary tacks and put neat, permanent ones in, in order to hold the two sides together at various points across the blanket. Without them, it would just separate and that would piss me off. Hopefully Eleanor will be able to come over again soon and help me finish off that bit.

But for now, it's pretty much done, and I absolutely fucking LOVE it!

FIN