As requested!

After my last post Barbara asked for more details on my Rams and Yowes blanket so I thought I would oblige. I bought it as a kit back in February 2012 and I must say that the price has gone up significantly since I bought it! I cast on after doing the on-line road test for continental knitting as this blanket uses stranded knitting,each row uses 2 colours of yarn with the strands held at the back of the work. Importantly this blanket is worked in the round so there is a set of 5 stitches which are worked to give somewhere to work the steek and also somewhere to change the colours over when required. By using both hands to knit it means that each hand carries its own colour of yarn and so makes it quicker and simpler to knit. I got part way through the tube and had to stop as life got too complicated and exhausting to give it the attention it deserved and I stuck with much simpler knitting. After Ted died it has taken me the last 6 months to get my energy levels and concentration back to something nearer to what it had been - who knew that extended sleep deprivation would take this long to recover from? Over Christmas we went away to Norfolk and the sea air worked some of its magic on me and I finished the tube part of the blanket.

Sorry but I don't have an extra blanket picture to show you but these seagulls made me smile!

This is where it gets tricky as you have to work 2 lines of crochet in order to prevent the steek from unravelling - thankfully the designer, Kate Davies provides detailed tutorials on how to work these and the tube then becomes a flat piece of work. Next up is the picking up stitches part which seemed to take me forever, partly because I had to redo some of them to get it to look correct but that was my lack of technique and nothing more! Now I am working the border stitches but the whole thing doesn't look much yet as all of the border stitches sit on 2 long circular needles and everything get scrunched along as you work - when  it looks less like a messy pile I will take more pictures to show you.

In the mean time I can show my newest project:

These lovelies arrived yesterday!

And I wound them straight away. They are the first quarters' yarns for the kaleidoscope crochet blanket club hopefully I will have more to show you on this soon! I will try and be back again next week with some progress for you. S x