The Yellow Blanket / Lockdown Day 148

After quite a few people commented on the pictures I posted on Facebook, I decided to share the story (including the pattern, which I made up – it’s very simple!) of The Yellow Blanket. I refer to it as though it were the title of a book, because there’s something about the journey of making a blanket that feels like writing a book. Not that I’ve done so. Yet.

The first blanket I made, during lockdown, was The Green Blanket – for my daughter. This one was for my son. I felt like working with blue, but when I gave him the choice, he chose the colours of a crest of one of the Harry Potter houses. The colours (yarn) I managed to find, that came closest to his choice were yellow, grey, black and white. I drew my little design on paper, bought the yarn and started. I started on 9 June and ended on 13 August. I could get really Virgoey and explain that there was a period when I stopped, because I’d run out of yellow, but that’s neither here nor there – the blanket took about 2 and a half months to complete, and the end result was really beautiful.

I have to say that I absolutely love making a blanket for someone. I love giving them the choice of colours and I love creating the blanket from that first bit to the very end, when I do the border.

I am a novice, when it comes to crocheting: the entire blanket uses two types of stitches – single crochet and double crochet. I’m putting the pattern down in my own way, and I hope it makes sense to you. Basically, if I can make a blanket, anyone can. I took pics throughout the process, so I’ll include them as well.

STEP ONE: I started with a chain of 272 stitches. This is for a double bed, but it doesn’t hang far down the sides. You could do a longer chain, if you want a wider blanket. Be careful not to work too tightly, because you need to crochet into each chain stitch for your first row.

                                I always start with a chain as long as the width of the blanket. 

STEP TWO: ROW 1: Once you’ve got your chain of 272 stiches, do one row of double crochet stitch, placing one stitch into each chain stitch. The end result will look like a long curly ladder, or a DNA strand. 😊

                                         Row one - when it really starts. 

STEP THREE:  ROW 2: two double crochet stitches into the first space, miss a space, then two double crochet stitches into every second space.

This is the equivalent pic of the green blanket. I hope you can see the first row and then the second row which has two stitches into one space. 

STEP FOUR: ROW 3 (and every row, for the rest of the blanket):  two double crochet stitches into each space between the pairs of two stitches.

      I love watching how the colours start to form what will eventually be a repeated sequence.

I will talk about the border later, but here’s something about the yarn I used. I bought Charity double knit in four colours: Banana (a pale yellow), School Grey, Black and White. I used about 24/25 balls.

                            For my son’s blanket, this was the way I worked the four colours:

                        Six rows Grey, two rows Black, six rows Banana and two rows White.

I prefer to have all the joins on one edge, so that when I tuck them in later, I need to work on just one edge, and not two.

STEP FIVE: BORDER

For this blanket, I did three rows to make the border:

Before starting with the first row, I tucked in all the loose bits (where I joined colours), using a darning needle and sometimes the crochet hook. I work the loose bits neatly along the long edge of the blanket, so that when I do the border, I crochet everything into the border.

Row 1: Using Black yarn, I did one row of single crochet, all around the blanket.

Row 2: Still using Black, I did one row of double crochet, all around the blanket.

Row 3: I decided to be a little quirky and do the final row in Banana – just because. For this row, I found a Youtube tutorial on how to make the shell/scalloped border stitch, and that’s what I did. This is how it goes: One single crochet stitch. Skip two spaces and do five double crochet stitches into the third space. Skip two spaces and do one single crochet stitch. And keep going, all around the blanket.

                                For the first time, I tried the shell (aka scalloped) border. Easy! 

And that’s it.

I have a little ritual, when I make blankets: the night that I complete the blanket, which I’ve been working on for weeks and weeks (and being covered by while working), I sleep under it, as a sort of goodbye. The next day, I wash it in the washing machine, make sure it gets lots of fabric softener so that it smells nice, then I hang it on the line to dry.

I hope you get as much joy out of the process as I do. There is something really calming and quite magical about crocheting. If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yup – she’s crazy!”, then I assume you won’t be trying to make one yourself.   

What’s next for me? I’m working on three beanies (knitting), then it’s one blanket for the tiniest person in our family (7 months old) and then an adult’s blanket ordered by a friend. Hmmmm, I wonder what colours she’ll choose.     

Happy me!