Happy Easter everyone! I hope you're all enjoying the long weekend. I always look forward to having the extra time off work to get on with other stuff at home, but then try to fit in too much and wear myself out!
Today I actually want to show you a couple of things I haven't made myself, although I have been involved in the projects.
If you've seen any of my previous posts you might have noticed that I take a lot of my photos against a multi-coloured blanket background. In purely practical terms this is mainly because it's on my bed which is a good flat space in pretty good light under the window. In more sentimental terms it's there because my Mum knitted it and gave it to me, and I've had it on my bed all winter because it's really warm and cosy.
Now I love anything multi-coloured, or anything coloured in general really. You'll very rarely find me wearing black unless there's a pattern or another colour somewhere in my outfit (red lipstick is a prime example). My bedroom has orange wallpaper, my bed sheets are bright colours, and a lot of my accessories and 'stuff' is very colourful too. I just find that being surrounded by colour makes me feel better, happier, and more optimistic. Most of the time - we're all allowed an off day.
In my crafting too I love colour. If you take a look back through my previous projects you'll barely even find anything in neutrals, I'd much rather use fun fabrics and yarns as I find them more fun to work with and they fit better with my personal style, or I'll try to match an appropriate colour if I'm making a gift for someone. My gardening is very colourful too, my favourites are any bright and cheerful flowers - at this time of year it's daffodils and tulips, later on I'll have sweet peas, lavender and dahlias, and my favourite cut flowers are gerberas.
Rainbows especially make me very happy, and not just in the traditional 'red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple' spectrum, but any combination of lots of colours together, whether they're subtle tones or bright contrasts. I quite often pin rainbow coloured things on my Pinterest boards purely because they make me smile.
Sorry, waxing lyrical a bit there, back to the blankets.
My Mum has been a knitter for years and years, since my Nan taught her, but she prefers to just knit simple things that she can work on in front of the TV without needing to concentrate too hard. Garter stitch squares are pretty much as simple as you can get, but once you've got a pile of well over 200 of them in loads of different colours the best use of them is in a massive bed blanket. This is where I came in to help; we spent a really fun couple of hours with all the squares laid out on the living room floor (after we'd moved the furniture to make room!) playing with patterns, eventually deciding on the diagonal striped effect with the colours running through toning families. It then took another long while to sew all the squares and rows together (I helped), and then Mum knitted a red narrow border to go all the way round which just finishes it off beautifully I think.
With this first blanket being a bit more luck than judgement in the co-ordination and planning stakes, Mum decided to choose her colour scheme more carefully for the next one. Thank goodness for the ease of internet shopping, quick delivery from Deramores, and a slightly weighed down delivery man, we now had a huge bag full of Red Heart Lisa in pinks, purples and blues. Mum's been working on this one for about the last six months - no rush, it's just for fun - but I absolutely love how it's turned out. It's slightly more subtle colour shading than my blanket, but I still love the rainbow effect that works really well on the diagonal. This one is having a purple border which Mum is in the process of knitting now.
I'm kind of hoping to acquire this blanket too, but we'll have to wait and see! And then we'll have the fun of choosing a whole new set of colours for the next one!
This post is my submission to the Deramores Craft Blog Competition 2015. Deramores is the UK's number one online retailer of knitting and crochet supplies. Visit www.deramores.com for more details.
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