Knitted Blanket and More Craftivity!

Yes it is finished! The longest, largest knitting project I've ever undertaken is complete and ready for darker, colder evenings in front of the TV. It is almost a year since I started it, using a few balls of wool laying dormant in my craft collection. You can read about the progress of the knitted blanket if you click on the label knitting project in the label cloud in the sidebar.

This post was meant to go out last week but I was preoccupied with family responsibilities, namely 'grandma' duties. It's been hectic with school runs and more unfamiliar routines but I did find time to work on another idea and you'll have noticed some other changes. After playing with the new Blogger design tools for some weeks without actually applying any changes, I finally clicked that little orange button. I hope you like the new look. Let me know what you think.

Unless you've already visited the Craft Adventures page of the blog you may be surprised to learn that an idea for a second knitted blanket began some months ago. This was inspired by this article from Craftster. Yes it's a rug, not a blanket and it is crochet rather than knitting. Brilliant though isn't it?

My second knitting project will be another blanket of knitted squares. The difference is that it will not be at all random but will follow a specific pattern. I've chosen another game character as you can see. Unlike the previous project this knitted blanket requires working out how much of each colour is needed before stepping anywhere near the wool shop. I used Excel, the spreadsheet application, to both create the pattern and calculate the number of squares of each colour the project will require. It's going to be a mammoth exercise but it will be a project of love as it's for my grandson. Mum's the word though as it's a surprise. What I don't know yet is for which Christmas or birthday it will be ready for...

I will be recording the time it takes to make and the costs etc. as part of the exercise and recording my progress. This is something I will also be doing for my card making projects in future for reasons to be examined soon.

I'll keep you all posted ;)

Thanks for reading - Have a lovely weekend x