Dhaveena's Blanket Finito

First of all, let me welcome my new followers. And let me thank everyone for their lovely comments on my last post about Rathfriland. I didn't reply to every single comment but I read and appreciated them all.

Today I was working from home; an arrangement I'm mighty glad to avail of as it saves me a lot of wasted travel time. So for lunch I had half a toasted soda farl (I didn't make the soda farl so no credit there) and a boiled egg (I didn't lay the egg but one of my hens did so I deserve a little bit of credit for that). While the egg was boiling I dashed out into the garden, lifted the last of the baby turnips and delved into a potato bed to glean enough potatoes for tonight's dinner. The egg was ready by this stage so I couldn't pick any beans. The lunch was tasty though very simple and quick to make. If you don't keep your own hens, and it is at all possible for you to do so, then I can highly recommend getting some. Having your own eggs is hard to beat. My son was with us a few days ago and I invited him to help himself to some vegetables from the garden, including the beans. He took me at my word for, when I went out after eating lunch to pick some beans for dinner, lo and behold there were only three pods left! Enjoy your beans son! I noticed that there were more tomatoes ready to be picked and lots more sweet pea but that had to wait until this evening.

You probably don't remember me telling you about Dhaveena's blanket. It seems like a long time ago since I started the blanket but I haven't been crocheting it exclusively all this time; there have been other things started and even finished in the mean time. Well, I'm very pleased to say that Dhaveena's blanket is now well and truly finito. Have a look at a few photos first and then I'll give you some details about it.

The yarn is Stylecraft Special DK 100% acrylic in Pale Rose (pink) and Meadow (green) plus Stylecraft Extra Special DK 100% acrylic in Spring Marl (pink and green mix). Using a 4mm hook I needed seven balls (100g) of the Spring Marl and three balls each of the Pale Rose and Meadow. The blanket is made up of three-round Granny squares, joined as you go. There are seventeen squares across and twenty five squares down. That's a total of four hundred and twenty five squares! There are five "Granny" rows round the blanket, in the Spring Marl, to make a border. Then there's just a very simple chain and picot edging, using the Meadow, to finish it off. The blanket is single bed sized; I didn't measure it exactly. Since there are four hundred and twenty five squares there must have been more than twice that number of ends to sew in. Not quite, as I crocheted over the starting end of each square and cut it off. That means there must have been about five hundred ends to sew in! That's what happens when you make such small squares but the finished result is worth it, in my opinion.

This blanket won't be given to Dhaveena until her baby brother or sister is born and I give him or her the blossom shawl and little matching cushion. Ah!! I've just realised I didn't show you the filler I made for the cushion. The cushion cover that I crocheted is about 10" square but I couldn't get a small enough cushion pad to fit it. So I just decided to make one. I bought some fabric; as close a match as I could get; cut it and sewed almost the whole way round, turned right side out, stuffed it and then closed the gap. Here it is.....

The colours in the first photo are really weird for some reason. That's more than you bargained for -two finitos in one post - a blanket and a cushion.

By the way, look at the size of this bee that I spotted on one of the dahlias. It isn't a honey bee of course; it's a bumble bee.

I had to hold the flower to stop it waving about in the breeze.

On the subject of bees, last night the clearing boards were put into our bee hives. This means that when the bees move away from the honey into another part of the hive they can't get back to the honey again. After a few days all the honey frames should be clear of bees. Then we can extract the honey! We've that to look forward to at the weekend.

Hope you all have a good weekend whatever you have planned.