Winter Sunshine Blanket

As you may know there’s exciting news in our house – we’re expecting an addition to the family….a little brother for Pip! So this summer has been spent on DIY, moving rooms around and very little blogging!

I did manage to get a weekend to myself and booked myself on to a crochet retreat – a whole weekend of crochet with fellow crocheters…bliss! And as part of the weekend there was ALOT of yarn supplied.  I have to admit this was part of the attraction, and it was also great to try out different brands which I haven’t used before.  Which is how my latest blanket came about.

Baby boy is due New Years Day (yep….really) and while it’s a nice and festive time of year, here in the UK it can also mean lots of wet, windy, cold grey days.  So I decided to make a bright, happy blanket for the little guy, to bring a bit of sunshine to those grey days when we’re out walking with the pram.

I’ve also ways loved the Sunburst pattern, and when I saw the Paton’s yarn at the retreat I knew these were the colours for me.  

The yarn is Paton’s Merino Extrafine Aran. It’s gorgeous and squishy and I love the bright colours.  Using the three blue shades I alternated the order to make six different sunburst rounds, and made six of each, for a blanket of 6×6.  I then did the final round in the bright sunshine yellow to square them off, before joining them with a pale grey.  This join is done by SC (US term) the rows together with wrong sides facing which gives a ridge effect on the front of the blanket.  I joined them all horizontally and then vertically to keep the process simple.

  

  
Onto the border….I wanted to add some size to it and use the existing colours – here’s the border order:

HDC round in grey, DC light blue, DC turquoise, DC royal blue, DC yellow and then finished off by going round one final time this time with crab stitch (also known as reverse SC) in yellow, which gives a nice solid edge.

  
This finished dimensions are  27″x 27″ and I used a 4.5mm hook.  

  

   
   

I’m so pleased with the finished blanket and I can’t wait to wrap the little guy up in it this winter!

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