Handmade Glamping - The Crochet Picnic Blanket

 I'm attempting to update all my craft projects and my Ravelry notebook. I want to try and work my way through all of the craft books that I've acquired and then get rid. There is just too many of them! I also have way too much yarn, odd assorted sundries of crafty bits 'n' bobs, and lots of WIP's. This is my journal for keeping track.

I've finished the Spice Of Life crochet blanket so far this year. This ate a lot of oddments up, plus several balls of Stylecraft Linen Drape which was on offer as it's now discontinued. This was my first large crochet project so I'm pretty pleased with this one, and I am already finishing another crochet blanket.

The first book I am working my way through is 'Handmade Glamping'. 10 years I've owned this book. And 10 years ago when I purchased it, I started the Seaside crochet blanket on page 114, decided it was too hard and stopped. The resulting piece of blanket floated all around three different houses in the last decade, mostly draped over the back of my office chair to conceal a small rip. Now, with my youngest daughter floating off to university in August I have decided to finish it as best I can and gift it to her as a little piece of home to take with her, and also to keep her warm when she can't afford the gas bill on a student income. Of course I have only a couple of balls of the original yarn left, so I've tried to colour match as best I can with the stash I now have and have used the original blanket as a central panel to work outwards from. How big will it be eventually? Who knows! I'll just keep going until around the end of July and crochet an edging around it. I'm not surprised I gave up though - the instructions for this blanket are a bit vague and really could have done with a stitch count. As a novice I'm not surprised I got frustrated. The original panel looks quite wonky which at the time I thought was my tension, but even now I've struggled to keep the edge in line and the rows the same width.