Daffodil Blanket

Several years ago I purchased a large quantity of hot yellow yarn on clearance.  I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but it was I Love this Yarn, so I knew I'd eventually use it.  A couple of blankets later (Zipper Blanket and the Blended Arrows Blanket), I still had some left, and I wanted to use it up.  This color is almost painfully bright, so finding colors to go with it was a challenge.  Then it occurred to me: if you're going to make a yellow blanket, you'll need some real variation in the type of yellow.  So I grabbed the leftover Buttercup yarn from the Speedy Afghan, and the leftover (I still have a ton) Banana yarn from the Easter Egg Blanket, and started looking through patterns.

I wanted the colors to really blend together instead of being obvious stripes.  Stitch 25 does that.  I've used this stitch before to make the Star Spangled Afghan, but for that I used a different color pattern, where 2 of the 3 strands were the same.  This time there were three distinct colors.  I love the way this turned out: it reminds me of daffodils.  This is a great way to make a single colored blanket look interesting: pick three shades of blue for example, and make your blue afghan.

Color Pattern: (1 row of buttercup, 1 row of hot yellow, 1 row of banana) repeated, ending with hot yellow.

Chain 182, then work stitch 25 until work reaches desired length.  Add the standard border to complete:
Add this border in Banana and you're done:
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 4: dc around, 5 dc in corner
Round 5: sc around, 3 sc in corner

I used I Love this Yarn in Banana, Hot Yellow, and Buttercup with a J hook to make this.

Another Aggie Afghan

When I bugged my buddy about what colors he and his fiance liked, he wasn't very helpful.  All I got was essentially, well, we're Aggies, so maroon and white are good.  I say that isn't very helpful because all of my buddies, the people I actually make blankets for, are Aggies.  I don't want to make 14 maroon and white afghans.  That gets boring and challenging to make something unique.  But this was the first request for maroon and white, so I went with it. 

I actually had some trouble coming up with a design for this afghan.  I had already made one Aggie blanket, the 12th Man Blanket and I saw no way to improve upon it.  So, I decided to just go for simple, classic crochet.  Basically I did wide (8 rows of dc) panels of maroon separated by 3 rows of hdc in white, maroon, white.

Here's how I made it:
Chain 180
Row 1: dc in 4th ch from hook, dc across (maroon)
Rows 2-8: ch 3, turn, dc across (maroon)
Row 9: ch 2, turn, hdc across  (white)
Row 10: ch 2, turn, hdc across (maroon)
Row 11: ch 2, turn, hdc across (white)
Rows 12-19: ch 3, turn, dc across (maroon)
Row 20: ch 2, turn, hdc across  (white)
Row 21: ch 2, turn, hdc across (maroon)
Row 22: ch 2, turn, hdc across (white)

Repeat Rows 12-22, ending with row 19.  This border completes it.
Round 1: hdc around (3 hdc in corner) white
Round 2: sc around (3 sc in corner) maroon
Round 3: dc around (5 dc in corner) maroon
Round 4: sc around (3 sc in corner) maroon
Round 5: dc around (5 dc in corner) maroon
Round 6: sc around (3 sc in corner) maroon

I made this with I Love this Yarn in Aubergine and White with a J hook.

Smores Blanket

This is another story of impulsive buying of clearance yarn.  I found it for only $1 a skein, and bought all of it they had, about 20 skeins.  Then it sat in my stash, and continued to sit.  Finally I decided I needed to use it and started a blanket, my favorite way to crochet down my stash.  When I was finished with what I normally do, I still had a couple of skeins left.  So I decided why not make the border just a little bit wider?  It's annoying to have left over yarn because then you have to figure out what to do with it or just let it sit, taking up space.  So, I added another couple of rounds to the border.

This was the first blanket I've made with self-striping yarn, and it was interesting.  The sections of one color don't even make it one whole row, but they're much longer than in variegated yarn.  I liked the striated look that it gave.  The colors reminded me of a combination of neapolitan ice cream and smores.  Basically, one section looks like toasted marshmallows, another looks like graham crackers, another kinda sorta like chocolate, and still another like strawberries.  So, it's smores with strawberries added to the mix.

Anyway, I had decided to give a blanket as a Christmas gift to a family at church, and knew basically the colors that I wanted, but I just couldn't come up with anything I wanted to make.  Then I happened to see this blanket that I had already finished, and realized it was exactly what I had been trying to design.  I couldn't come up with something I wanted to make because I'd already done it.  So I gave it to them, and they loved it, even remarking that I had gotten the colors right.

Chain 185, then work the spaced shell stitch until satisfied with length. 
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 4: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 5: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 6: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 7: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
 
I made this with Red Heart Stripes yarn in Latte Stripes with a J hook.

Shiny Mint Blanket

Undoubtedly, the biggest fan of my crocheting, and this blog, is my mom.  Whenever I talk to her she always asks when the next post is coming.  So, I decided it was past time for her to have her very own blanket.  Therefore this Christmas that was her present.  Having the blanket be for my mom, it was actually fairly easy to design because I know her and her house so well.

So, I had this general idea of a design in my head, but nothing specific.  Then I looked around and noticed a blanket I had started months earlier but hadn't finished.  It was perfect.  The color was right.  Also, I know that in Texas a really warm blanket is not desired.  So using Simply Soft instead of my usual I Love this Yarn brand would work great.  Simply Soft is soft and has somewhat metallic sheen to it. 

This blanket had started as a way to use up more clearance yarn that I had impulsively bought.  I had skeins and skeins of it, lots of skeins.  So, to use up more of it, I chose to make a queen sized blanket.  That was a good decision because my mom has a queen size bed, so it was perfect.  Also, I did use up all of the yarn I had and actually had to buy one more skein to finish it.

I decided to use stitch 23 for the blanket because I know that it works extremely well with solid colored yarn.  This isn't the first blanket I've made with it either.  I made a maroon blanket for myself, details are at the bottom of this post.  I'm happy with it, but it's hard to see the pattern because the yarn is so dark.  So this mint green color was perfect.

Chain 203, then work stitch until satisfied with length.  Add this border to finish:
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 4: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 5: sc around, 3 sc in each corner

I made this with Simply Soft in Woodland Heather and a J hook.

Sunny Shells Blanket

When I find I Love this Yarn on clearance, I buy it, especially when it's only $1.43 a skein instead of $3.99.  This particular time, there were probably 30 skeins of the same color, so I bought them all.  The only problem was that I didn't know what exactly I would do with them.  I figured I'd end up making blankets out of them, but what stitch, and should it be paired with something else?  Variegated yarn is tricky to combine with other yarn.

Anyway, last year I made the Sunshine Blanket with this yarn for a buddy of mine who was getting married.  When I was done I still had about 15 skeins left, about the right amount for a blanket since variegated skeins are smaller than solid skeins.  So, I was bored, needed a project to keep my hands busy, and this yarn had been sitting around for a year and it needed to go away, so I started this project.  I initially tried to match the pink in the yarn to put solid colored stripes into it, but I couldn't find the right color, so I just kept it simple.  I decided to use stitch 28 because it is awesome for variegated yarn, and practically mindless.

I had no person or purpose in mind while I was making it, but I took it with me to various functions where I knew I was going to be seated for a while and could pursue a mindless project.  When I crochet in public, I routinely get comments from people about what I'm working on.  People are curious what exactly I'm making, because sometimes it's entirely not obvious.

Anyway, a lady at Bible study basically gushed over how much she loved the colors in this yarn.  That got me thinking: she really loved the blanket, and I knew she crocheted, but she never kept anything for herself.  Also, she loved the colors, and I kinda didn't, and I knew she would appreciate it: so about halfway through it became her blanket in my head.

Chain 187, then work stitch 28 until work reaches desired length.  Add this border to finish.
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in each corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 4: sc around, 3 sc in each corner
Round 5: dc around, 5 dc in each corner

I made this with I Love this Yarn in Perpetual Sunshine and a J hook.

Charcoal Blanket

I like to give blankets as wedding presents, so it would make sense that my friend since kindergarten, who happens to be married, would have a blanket from me.  Well, she didn't because she got married over 8 years ago, when I didn't know how to crochet.  So I decided to give her one for Christmas this year. 

I don't know what she was thought about my weird text of 'What's your favorite color?', but she responded 'Gray'.  When I saw that, I went hmmmmmm.  What to do with that?  So I decided I'd make a solid, dark gray/charcoal blanket. 

The only problem?  I Love this Yarn, the yarn I use to make blankets, only had 3 colors of gray: Light Gray, Gray Mist, and Graybeard, and none of those are dark.  So, I thought I'd have to branch out into another brand of yarn, uggh.  Well, I went to Hobby Lobby to buy yarn for another blanket, and lo and behold, they had a new color: Graphite, which was exactly the color I wanted.  So, I scooped it up and got started.

I decided to use stitch 1 from the new book I'm reviewing because it's such a simple, quick stitch that looks great in a single color.

Chain 180, then work stitch until work reaches desired length.  Add a border to finish.
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in corner 
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in corner
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in corner
Round 4: dc around, 5 dc in corner
Round 5: sc around, 3 sc in corner

I made this with I Love this Yarn in Graphite with a J hook.

Blue Stripes Blanket

Living far from family has its challenges, so I'm grateful to the people in my church who have helped me out and included me in their family events.  I decided to surprise three of these families with an afghan for Christmas.

For this blanket, I knew that I wanted to use navy because I knew that would go with their decor, but I had some trouble picking a second color.  I finally settled on using a lighter shade of blue.  When I went through the first book of 30 stitches, I had two favorite stitches: 1 and 13.  For this afghan I used stitch 13.  It's a very fast stitch that looks much more complicated than it really is.  The color pattern is basically a large block of navy, then three stripes of light blue repeated.

Color Pattern:
16 rows of navy, (2 rows light blue, 2 rows navy, 2 rows light blue, 2 rows navy, 2 rows light blue, 16 rows navy) repeated

Pattern:
Chain 182, then work stitch 13 following color pattern until satisfied with length.  For me this was four sets of stripes.  Then add this border:
Round 1: sc around, 3 sc in corner (navy)
Round 2: dc around, 5 dc in corner (navy)
Round 3: sc around, 3 sc in corner (navy)
Round 4: sc around, 3 sc in corner (pale denim)

Round 5: sc around, 3 sc in corner (navy)
Round 6: dc around, 5 dc in corner (navy)
Round 7: sc around, 3 sc in corner (navy)

I made this in I Love this Yarn in Navy and Pale Denim with a J hook.