Eric’s Blanket pt. 2

Posted on April 18, 2018 by caendicott

Welcome back for Part 2 of the Eric’s Blanket Saga!!! If you missed Part 1, you can find it here.

When we left off, I had finished knitting all 324 squares for this queen size blanket. For the remainder of January 2018, I wove in ends and readied the piles to be assembled into their respective stripes.

But first! I sewed 18 squares together in a vertical strip, and made 3 strips. Once all the strips of a certain color were put together, I broke out the crochet hook to turn the strips into a stripe. There were 3 strips to each stripe.

Using a size H crochet hook (US 8 / 5 mm), I single crocheted the strips together to make a stripe.

THANKFULLY, my brother wanted single color stripes. If he’d wanted things mixed up, I still wouldn’t be done with this thing (as of April 15, 2018 when I wrote this post).

Red Heart Paddy Green Fully assembled on Feb 19, 2018

Red Heart Black Fully assembled Feb 24, 2018.

Red Heart Orange Fully assembled March 8, 2018.

Red Heart Royal Blue Fully assembled March 17, 2018.

Red Heart White Fully assemebled March 21, 2018.

Red Heart Cherry Red Fully assembled March 24, 2018.

My original gift date was Christmas 2017, and that didn’t happen. My next gift date was going to be March 24, 2018 (the day I finished assembling the Red stripe). That was the original date of the family birthday party, BUT it got moved and combined with Easter (April 1st).

Eric came over the next day, March 25, and finalized the order he wanted the stripes put together. Because once I attached those stripes together, I wasn’t changing anything!

I had pictured it as a vertical stripe blanket, but Eric decided he wanted the stripes horizontal. The final order ended up being: Orange, Blue, White, Black, Red, and Green.

The same Sunday, after returning from lunch at my in-laws, I sat on the floor and crocheted the stripes together. It took six hours, and I finished it at 10:30 pm. The only break I took was to eat dinner.

Not Eric’s room. Our guest room. Pre-gifting.

It was very well received:

Final thoughts: A true labor of love. This was the largest knitted project I’ve made to date. I’m so glad it’s done. Philip and I toasted it’s completion.

 

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Eric’s Blanket pt. 1

Posted on April 16, 2018 by caendicott

 

 

If you’re not a subscriber to my Knitting All the Blankets YouTube Channel, then you’ve missed out on the saga that was Eric’s Blanket.

Last March (2017), my little brother bought a house, and I had this overwhelming desire to make him a blanket.

My goal was to give it to him as a Christmas present. I can tell you right now, that didn’t happen.

Eric chose the colors: green, black, red, blue, orange, and silver. Well, all the silver yarn we looked at were too grey for him, so grey became white.

I did the calculations, and figured to cover his queen size been, I’d need to knit 324 squares measuring 5 inches square.

6 colors of year, 54 squares of each color, 324 total.

I used all Red Heart acrylic yarn, so my brother wouldn’t have to worry about special washing instructions.

The pattern I used was a modified Grandma’s Favorite washcloth pattern. I increased to 25 stitches instead of the 45 stitches the pattern calls for.

Me holding up the final knitted square, with a celebratory drink in my hand.

I started knitting the squares March 2017, and finished the final square January 26, 2018. That’s just knitting the squares! I still had to put the thing together!!!

Here are the pictures of the piles of knitted squares in their respective piles:

It was a long process to get all these squares knitted. My projects page on Ravelry has all the information, if you’re interested.

This is the end of this post. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I finish the blanket and present it to him.

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