Crochet blankets – one finished, one started!

I have a crochet finish!! After 3 years my Wool-eater blanket is complete!

This is a wonderful free pattern from Sarah London’s blog and one of the first crochet patterns I tackled.

I finished my first wool-eater blanket about 5 years ago for a friend’s 50th birthday, you can see it here. It was made with 9 large blocks crocheted together rather than just one block and using Rooster Almerino DK. It even has it’s own inspiration pack for sale on our website.

3 years ago I started this new one, primarily because I was teaching a class using this pattern and needed to remind myself how to do it! I wrote about it’s beginnings here.
This time I’ve used Sublime Cashmerino Silk yarn, which is lovely and bouncy. Only problem is they discontinued a few colours while I was working on it! I managed to squirrel enough away to get it this big though (so I had to stop as I have no more wool!).

This is the back, though some people prefer this side to the front. I just say it’s reversible.

It is lovely and soft and squidgy, and really heavy! The name ‘wool eater’ is very apt – by the time I got to that last round of blue wool each round was taking 3 BALLS OF 50g WOOL!!

Here it is on my bed, to give you an idea of scale.

I can’t leave it out though as it is a magnet for my kitten Hector who gets his claws into it and pulls the wool (while he’s rolling around purring). But I’m not giving it away as it took 3 YEARS and HUNDREDS OF POUNDS to make! So I am hassling my husband to get on and build this cabin he has been promising me for the last 4 years so my lovely blanket can live in there.
Basically I need a whole cabin built just to house this blanket. No, that’s not mad at all.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the most amazing crochet project on Instagram called Sophie’s Universe CAL (crochet-along). It’s just stunning and I was desperate to start it. This encouraged me to hurry up and finish the wool-eater as I knew I couldn’t justify starting anything else till I had finished that!

I am using Sublime yarn again as I have left overs from the wool-eater and also we just got some yummy new colours in stock and I can’t wait to use them. This is the initial pull from my yarn stash.

Monday was my rest day so I started it then. As sewing becomes more and more my ‘day job’ I look on crochet as my crafting ‘hobby’. I love the ombre look on this initial flower.

The CAL takes place over 20 weeks and is already up to week 16 as it started in January. But you can join in at any time you like.
All the details are on Look What I Made blog and I have to say it is very impressively done with links and video tutorials and conversion tables, and everything you could possible need. Plus she is making 3 at the same time, one in worsted, one in DK (which I am using) and one in 4-ply, what a lot of work, and it’s all available for free! The DK blanket will finish up at 1.4M.
The only slight difficulty is that the pattern is written in American crochet terminology and so you have to do a bit of translation as you go along.

This is it after week 2. I am totally in love and just want to spend all day working on it. Oh dear.
Anyone want to join me??!

Use #sophiesuniversecal2015 to check out all the beautiful crochet eye candy and to see the delights I have ahead!