Hello there. Thanks for visiting.
What is everyone up to this weekend?
Safe to say I’m on a bit of a mission this spring bank holiday, I need to finish my Christmas Eve Blanket!
I know, I know, it’s not even June!!
Here’s how it happened…
On my final workshop of 2019 at Knitting Pretty, about 10 days before Christmas, we got the idea that it would be massively fun thing to have a BIG knit along with as many people as possible joining in and all making ourselves a blanket that we could snuggle up under on Christmas eve 2020.
On that December Saturday back in 2019 when the world was a different place, a small group of us got very excited at how much joy it would bring us, and much discussion took place as to what it would look like and what a wonderful thing it would be.
I left Knaresborough that afternoon, full of enthusiasm, clutching several balls of West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab yarn, which I was going to use to design and knit a fabulous blanket for this project, that we had decided needed to be kicked off in what seemed at the time to be the dim and distant summer!!
January came along and I had loads of ideas and couldn’t wait to get cracking on with my new assignment.
The ColourLab comes in lots of scrummy colours!
We have also invited Sharon at Ewe and Yarn in Thirsk to join in the fun.
The aim of this undertaking is that it will be a project that is accessible to anyone with basic knitting skills, but also enough to entertain those of us who have more experience.
I’ve designed lots of different squares with an even mix of colourful Fair Isle squares and plain coloured, textured stitch squares. These 20 squares will all be joined together to form your blanket. Knitters will be able to knit the blanket as I have done, or pick and choose which of the squares they like or feel confident to knit. Maybe you never tried cable knitting and want to give it a go? you could just knit all the squares that use cable stitches and do each one several times. There are going to be endless possibilities with this 🙂
Because certain techniques might be unfamiliar to some people we thought it would be rather nice to have some little workshops so that you are learning at the same time as creating your special blanket.
I started off a Pinterest board which is now teaming with ideas and, to inspire me, I wrote a list of words that I wanted to use as themes for the squares.
I was going great guns with this enterprise and popped to Knitting Pretty again just before lockdown started to make sure I had enough yarn to finish it off.
Then when we actually went into lockdown I found I could not focus on it and the whole thing ground to a halt.
However, over the past couple of weeks I have realised that if I don’t complete the design stage, we won’t be able to share the knit along with you all and the week I had done would have gone to waste, and all that fun we had planned won’t be happening. Therefore, I am cracking on and aiming to have something, which I hope you will like, to show you very very soon. I’m also working out how we can join in this project all together and keep the idea of incorporating some small workshops, whilst still being able to socially distance if we need to, as who can say how long it’ll be before normal service can resume?
For now here’s a taste of what is to come…
[…] I talked about how I came to be knitting a Christmas project in the summertime in my previous blog. […]