Chunky Blanket Ta Dah!

Back in January I showed this blanket to you.  

Click here to see it.  

And after spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to find, on my blog, when I first picked out this yarn, I decided I must not have posted about it.  I know I posted it on Instagram, and it was sometime last year...around Marchish.

(you do know the ish, makes it somewhat of a flexible time frame.)

I already had all of the cream yarn at home.  I'm a binge yarn buyer. 

I'm trying to change that, but it's hard. 

Purses are another binge buying thing which we are not talking about right now.

Or ever.

So,

I bought the colorful yarn and it is CHUNKY.

The blanket design was originally supposed to be two different KINDS of squares, as well as different sizes of squares.  I forgot about the kinds, and only made them all the same.  Say Lah Vee.  (American spelling-teehee)

 Even though I really liked the colors and the yarn, something wasn't connecting for me with this blanket.  My cousin, Vickie, suggested I take some of the creamy chunky yarn and make some smaller squares with it.  So I did.  That helped a lot. 

But I had already stitched some squares together and I wasn't about to take them apart!
Then I couldn't decide how to piece it all together.  I was going to add a few rows of single crochet, then a few more squares...but I didn't like it.  And I was going to add this yarn that Vickie got me for my birthday last year, but it was a different weight.

 I took out some colorful squares, and made some smaller cream squares.  And I took out some small squares and added a few more larger squares.

 

And I laid it out a hundred times in a hundred different ways.  And every time I picked it up, I would try to lay it back down the same way and I never did!

I finally started taking pictures of it with my phone so I could lay it down the same way I picked it up.

Then I put it away!  Like, put it in a bag and in the cold craft room.

 Sewing all of this together was quite the challenge.  I had to have time to lay it all out on the bed.  And I'd sit kind of cockeyed on the bed and stitch it together.  At this point it wasn't something I could pick up and do a little at a time, and it was too heavy to drag along with me.

So it sat in a bag in the cold craft room, unfinished, until my New Years Resolution to finish unfinished projects.  Which, btw, is my new years resolution every year.  Along with the poundage. 

I finally got it all out again, when I had a full day here and there this winter, and I stitched it together.  Then I had to weave in all of those ends.  

This blanket is all wool and the hand dyed red yarn fades.  I had a pink spot on my bedspread one time where the red was laying!  I still love it, but I know it will only be hand washed forever.

 

 I decided I would take a sheet and stitch it to the back of the blanket, just in case I had more red fadage on 'things'.  In my head I thought it would look nice to blanket stitch the sheet on before I put the entire border on the blanket.  

 

I was going to finish the border after I blanket stitched the sheet on.  So I cut the sheet. 

 

 And that theory about blanket stitching didn't look so good!!!  But the sheet still SEEMED plenty big. 

 

 I forgot to mention the flowers.  I was going to put flowers on top, stitch them through the blanket and the sheet layer, to kind of hold the sheet to the yarn.  And I had decided about the flowers a few months back.  When it was still summer!

So I laid the backing out, stitched the flowers on to hold the backing on so I could watch the telly and stitch the sheet to the blanket.  Guess what?  Got to the end and it did not fit very nicely.  It looked like it would fit, but when I stitched it on it just didn't look good.

So I took all of the flowers back off...

 

Got out another sheet,

and stitched it on, then after making sure the sheet fit, I stitched all of the flowers back on.....

and FINALLY!!!

 TAAA DAAAAAH!!!!!

Dixie loved it from the very beginning!

We tried to sleep with it on the bed a couple of times and it's just too warm!

But I LOVE IT!  

I DO.

I get cold in the evenings and

It's VERY warm and snuggly.

It goes well with crochet projects, hot chocolate, and old movies!

 

On to my next unfinished project!

 The honeycomb bag.

I'm glad I got this blanket finished as it's going to get into the 50's this week, way too warm to try it out!  I'm ready for warm weather and sunshine!!!!

Cindy Bee