Babette Blanket

Phew. It's finished.

I started with 1800 gm of superwash sockyarn in 17 colours. A few weeks, a lot of hooking, sewing and (let's be honest LOTS AND LOTS of) swearing later I am left with 290 gm of yarn and a blanket that I expect will keep me warm and comfy whatever else may be going on around me.

I did a lot of whinging during this project. Stitching up the 272 squares seemed like a never ending task. But eventually it did end and I began the border. I couldn't decide on a border and changed my mind a couple of times before deciding to finish the blanket off with a single round of each colour (well, most colours, I didn't have enough brown, dark green or gold/yellow). The extra wide border helped use up more of the yarn (I wanted to minimise the leftovers) and added some much needed width to the blanket.

I finished the last round on Tuesday night and did a little happy Babette Blanket dance when I wove in the last end.

Turns out that the happy dance was a bit premature.

Friday I decided to block the blanket (why? why? it didn't really need it). I soaked it in the usual manner, squished out as much water as I could which wasn't very much. Considering this dripping mass I had a great idea (moron). As it is superwash yarn I decided a few minutes in the washing machine gentle spin couldn't hurt (why? why?) and so I tossed it in.

A few minutes later I pulled out the blanket to find that the centre of about a quarter of the 272 blocks had - well - errr - self destructed. I should have taken a photo for you all to gape at in horror - because it was horrific - but I confess sharing my disaster was the last thing on my mind at that point.

I was gutted. Of course it was entirely my fault -- these squares start differently than the granny square technique I've used in the past -- and it is obviously far less forgiving of a slapdash finish when weaving in ends.

I cursed and considered trashing the whole thing.

But of course I didn't. I sat at my kitchen table, with a very damp blanket on my lap and began the long process of fixing the squares. The good news is that crochet doesn't unravel from the starting end, so things didn't get worse.....

I worked off and on repairing the blanket and in all it took over 9 hours to get it back to the finished state. As the state of the blanket improved, so did my mood and yesterday I did manage to get a photo of the last damaged square for historical purposes.

The finished blanket is 54 inches x 90 inches -- a good size for a single bed (it's on a double bed in this photo) and perfect for curling up on the sofa. It's almost 3 times the size of the Babette Blanket pattern as written (43x40 inches).

The finished weight of the blanket is 1500 gm.

I used mostly Indigo Moon Vancouver series superwash fingering weight yarn, in a rainbow of 15 colours. I supplemented that with 2 colours from Dream in Colour Smooshy sock yarn. All from Socktopus which has an amazing selection of really special sock yarn (including my favourite Duet Sock Yarn!).

The blanket is exactly what I set out to make.

It's not elegant, it's not sophisticated, but it makes me smile. When I wrap it around myself I feel warm and cosy.

It's sort of a hug in supewash!