I’m halfway to my blanket goal!
In February, one of the kidlets that I nanny, 4th, asked me to make her a blanket. This sparked a great idea to make a blanket for each of the children before Christmas and have that as their Christmas gift.
The first blanket worked up really nicely, and very quickly. From start to finish was less than a week. It was crochet and I loved working on it. You can see it here.
My second blanket was going to be for the eldest child, 1st. She is a little bit more of a challenge to work out. We don’t really spend a lot of time together, although recently she has been opening up a little bit more. She just graduated grade 8 and will be starting high school in the fall. She loves all kinds of animals, snakes being her favourite. And she loves mythical creatures as well. I decided to stick with what I know, and I selected a dragon design for her.
So, it’s technically a dishcloth, but ya know what, who cares! I loved the design! You can find the free pattern here. She’s definitely not a girly girl, so I decided to work this blanket in a dark hunter green. This was actually the third pattern I tried before finding one that actually worked for me.
I made one dragon square and measured it out and decided that, in order to make a good sized blanket, I would need 15 squares. I wasn’t going to make all of them dragon squares, though.
I made 5 dragon squares and 10 with just the border seen in the picture above, and nothing in the middle. It was so easy to adjust the pattern to eliminate the dragon from the square.
Now the only thing that was really horrible about this project was that it was knit. After learning crochet over the summer, I don’t like to do knitting. It’s so much more labour intensive and it takes so much longer to complete a project. This blanket took me two months to complete. It probably would have only taken about 4-6 weeks but it was exhausting work! Each square took about 4 hours of knitting to complete. While knitting one square a day was totally possible for a day off if I had nothing else planned, it physically hurt my arm to knit that much. I had to space it out.
Another problem was keeping the squares all the same size. With crochet, I’ve found it relatively easy to keep squares a uniform shape. But with knitting, the tension is so very important, that I literally had to rip a square out because the stitches were so loose.
Looking at the squares in person, it is kind of difficult to see which squares have dragons and which ones don’t. I’m not sure if this is just because the yarn was dark, or what, but I had to take extra time in laying out the squares to make sure that the dragons were all facing the correct way.
But it is finished now! It may be a little shorter than I would have liked, but I’m so over this blanket that I’m not even going to try to fix it. It’s supposed to be a lapghan so it doesn’t have to be very long.
To join the squares, I did a simple loop stitch and it seemed to work out really well. I really hope that 1st likes it!
I’ll be taking a little bit of time off from yarn things while I read some books this summer and then get back into the swing of things maybe at the end of August.
“how many dragon blankets does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
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Ummmm….none? Lol blankets cant change light bulbs
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Sorry, it was one of those things that I had to say and couldnt help it and I have no idea why 😂It was either that or “why did the dragon blanket cross the road?”
Anywho, this looks great and the color choice is perfect and also can I make one of these doing just chain stitch 😂😂😂
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Haha! Ok!!
And I’m not sure? I knit this one, and its just simple knit and pearl. Not sure how it would translate to crochet and chain stitches
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Hahah, just kiddin, I know I can’t, but that’s the only stitch I know besides casting on to knitting needles. Now, can I crochet a tiny ice cream sandwich or speckled pop tart out of rainbow loom bands? All day!!!!!
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Haha!! Ive never tried loom bands but they look super fun!
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Ermahgerd, so fun. I buy them for myself at this point because it relaxes me 😂
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Ooo awesome!
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Wow, that’s so much work!! Good on you- she’d better love it 😀
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So much work! And I really hope she does 😀
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This looks awesome! You did a great job and I’m sure Kidlet #1 will love it (I mean who wouldn’t, it’s got a dragon on it!)
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Awww thanks! 😀 her mom was over here last night so I showed her both blankets that I have done and she loved them!
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I’m going to have to put in my blanket request soon before you get too many orders
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I thought you wanted a scarf?
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That too
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LOL are they both to be Eagle’s green/white/grey? Why don’t I get a cupcake but you get a scarf AND a blanket?
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Lol I just asked for a blanket, you threw in the scarf
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You asked for something I couldn’t make and I said I only really make scarves and you said that would do. Lol so technically you asked for it
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Ok… That sounds familiar
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Haha!! Some obscure conversation you remember! Awesome!!
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I remember things!
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I know! But usually not this obscure lol
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Ha true
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Omg these are the most thoughtful little gifts ever! You’re very talented my friend!!! I would never have the patience for this sort of thing! Amazing
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Thanks Ely! The green one was a struggle to get done. I was going to take a break for about a month before starting the next but then I bought the yarn and started it last Sunday. I have all the squares done, now all I need to do is stitch them together haha. I love how much faster crochet is!
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