Catherine's Crochet Corner

I am loving my new blanket design. Absolutely loving it.

I love the shapes, I love the layout, I love the stitches I’m using – apparently my love affair with post stitches has been joined, at least for this blanket, with an enthusiasm for popcorn stitches. I did not intend for this to happen. I’ve not generally been all that fond of popcorns, but clearly I just needed to use them in the right way. I love the effect I’m know I’m going to be able to create, with the popcorns and the post stitches. I have it all in my head. I know how it’s going to look. And it’s exciting!

I’ve missed this feeling. It’s been quite a while since I had inspiration for a ‘big’ project like this, and it’s such a buzz.

It’s definitely a challenge, this blanket. I’ve had to do a lot of careful maths and, as ever, there has been a lot of pulling my hair out while ripping out rows over and over until I get things right. But I think all of my bigger blanket designs have been a challenge I’ve set myself, in some way. I always know what I want to achieve, and that what I want is possible – even if it takes me a while to find the right way to do it 🙂

I did have a little wobble, the other day. I mapped out the blanket, coloured it in to get an idea of what colours I wanted to use, and added up all the different pattern pieces. And went ‘oh crumbs, this is a lot of pieces, is anybody except me ever going to be able to face making it?’. But…that’s not why I design. As I said, every blanket – every bigger blanket – I’ve designed, I’ve done because I wanted to see if I could. To challenge myself. Demelza, Ross Poldark, Eve’s Sunflowers, The Secret Garden – each of them was designed with a different goal or idea in mind, whether that was simply a ‘can I even do this?’ goal or a more complex ‘can I tell a story with this blanket?’.

This one is another ‘can I do this?’ blanket. Because why take the easy route? It’s complicated and there’ll be a lot of pieces to join together at the end, but I think I can do it. I’m certainly enjoying the journey! So it doesn’t really matter if nobody else makes it. I’m having fun 😀

So, wobble smoothed over, I played with yarn pegs and picked out my colours (Stylecraft Special DK, twelve gorgeous jewel-toned colours), finished designing the last couple of pattern pieces, and now I’m about to embark on the epic task of working up the whole blanket and writing up the pattern neatly and (hopefully) coherently.

It’s exciting!