As you may have spotted on our facebook page last night we have launched our first blanket crochet along that will be run as a monthly subscription of just £1 a month. We have had lots of people signing up which is great and lots of questions too which I am trying to keep up with. I am hoping that this blog should answer most of your questions about the exciting bits of this project including what wool you need and what sizes things will be.
Who is it for?
This Crochet along is available to anyone who can read UK crochet terms and knows all basic crochet stitches. If you have taken our beginner course this is a great follow on project to get your teeth into.
Blanket Size
Firstly how big the blanket is is entirely up to you. I picked to do 288 stitches as I wanted a really big blanket for my lounge and mine is currently very approximately 247cm wide or 97 inches. However the whole pattern is worked out on a repeat of 12 stitches so you could make a scarf, cushion covers, a smaller blanket, several smaller blankets it’s up to you. There is also no minimum number of months that you can sign up for so you could do a month or lots of months it’s up to you. I don’t want it to be like a gym membership that haunts you as you merrily spend money and don’t make use of it.
Wool recomendations
Yarn type – I would recommend acyrlic or wool you really need a forgiving and reasonable straight forward yarn to be able to enjoy it. Therefore I would avoid cotton as the mix of thicknesses may make it a little trickier to handle the pattern neatly.
Colours and thicknesses – this is going to take a little longer to explain. So I love colour and I literally bought loads and loads of wool on special offer to make my blanket and then decided I wanted more colours so added some more from my stash too. The complete list I am using currently is shown below. However the pattern is such that you could use any number of colours that you already have the only thing that I would recommend is that you do have all thicknesses of yarn in your blanket. For example if I am using a super chunky yarn its best that you do too otherwise the stitches might not work out correctly. However I have several different colours of super chunky – you don’t need more than one if one is all you have there is no need to buy more for the sake of copying me. This pattern is meant to be challenging and fun but not regimented so let loose a little and experiment and get rid of some of your stash wool. On the first blanket like this that I made sometimes I even changed colour mid row if I ran out of one wool and it still looks great!
My list of wool:
Sirdar Hayfield New Bonus Aran 100g – Chocolate (947) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield New Bonus Aran 100g – Forest Fruits (679) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield New Bonus Aran 100g – Lemongrass (699) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield New Bonus Aran 100g – Bottle Green (839) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield New Bonus Aran 100g – Primrose (957) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield New Bonus Aran 100g – Fields Of Gold (666) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield New Bonus Aran 100g – Oatmeal (964) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus Chunky – Amber (670) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus Chunky – Light Natural (936) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus Super Chunky – Light Natural (936) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus Super Chunky – Walnut (927) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus Super Chunky – Pumpkin (766) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Olive Green (634) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Khaki Green (632) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Pumpkin (766) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Forest Fruits (679) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Lemon (659) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Orchard (904) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Oatmeal (964) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Sunflower (978) – 100g
Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK – Primrose (957) – 100g
To this I added the following from my stash…
Stylecraft Special DK in Saffron, buttermilk, khaki, meadow, mustard and citron. But none of these were whole balls.
To look at it in another way I have…
15 balls of DK
7 balls of aran
2 balls of chunky
3 balls of super chunky
I am currently 100 rows into designing the pattern and I am currently planning to get t0 288 rows as that seems like a good plan (this may change). My blanket currently measures approximately 81cm or 32 inches long. I do tend to crochet slightly looser than average tension so yours may end up a light smaller if you crochet tigher than me but that will not make it any less of a blanket. I do have multiple balls of some of the colours in the Hayfield yarn but I have not started any new balls yet. You can see how much I have left in the project bag below.
Pattern Releases
Every Friday I will release approx 7 rows of the pattern so you can do a row a day. Some people have expressed distress at getting behind some weeks, this really doesn’t matter but I will bear this is mind so if one week involves some tricky or time consuming stitches I may release less than 7 rows to try and take some of this pressure away as it will be more enjoyable if we are all crocheting along together in a relaxed way. Therefore for Friday you only need 7 colours to get started. I used Hayfield aran 0839, Hayfield DK 0957, Hayfield DK 0634, Hayfield DK 0964, Hayfield aran 0679, Stylecraft DK meadow, Hayfield chunky 0939 however you could just have 4 colours of DK, 2 aran and 1 chunky. To be honest there is not much difference between DK and aran so you could use these interchangeably throughout.
Support and technical stuff
Along with the written pattern releases where possible a diagram will be issued too. Both of these will be emailed to you every Friday in pdf format. Any questions can be emailed and there will be a private facebook group that you will be a member of while you are subscribed to the CAL where you can share pictures, problems and get support from others including myself. I am hoping to record video tutorials for any tricky bits to help out those who may be stuck as and when required.
Get Involved and Join Us
To sign up for the CAL you need to email us at 2020cal@straightcurves.co.uk and we will send you a reference number and our bank details so you can set up a monthly standing order for payment. We will check this before emailing out that months patterns every Friday. We are going to base it on calendar months so the first payment will cover April and the next one is due before 1 May as that is the first Friday in May. Please note I haven’t started sending out emails yet to those who have already signed up but it’s on my list for tomorrow.
Don’t forget that is you want wool we have lots in stock, including some random balls of super chunky that I am going to photograph and list for sale tomorrow.
Please let me know if I have missed anything and I will update this post so that everything is in the same place.
There is no closing date for joining the CAL you can join at anytime and back pay and get all the patterns released already together, we were going to another option to allow you to start at week one at any time but managing who is on which week may just be too much for my lockdown brain to handle.
Thanks and good luck, I’m so excited to see the colours everyone picks!
Karen x