Side tracked

The Boygoblin has started to pretend. Which is lovely, especially when I find him firmly smooshing his stuffed rabbit face-first into the catfood bowl.

Or when he dissolves in heartbreak because he can’t get Andy, his boy doll, into its fiddly little doll-sized sleepsack.

The catfood I’ve just had to get a bit zen about, but the sleepsack? That I can solve.

So last week I pulled some yarn scraps (Cath Kidston Book of Crochet since you ask) and made a good old old-fashioned granny blanket.

Old style granny blanket

Apart from being doll-sized, its just like the real thing – its as ugly as you’d expect, and catches on little doll toes. DearWife loves it, and says its just like the ones she grew up with.  I won’t be making another one, for pretty much exactly the same reason.

Doll sized

And boygoblin? Fewer tears, because he can easily put Andy to bed.  

Andy's all snuggled in

And then zoom  him around the house.

Check out those drivers...

Did I mention Andy sleeps in the lorry walker?

All snuggled up on the flat"bed"

Fancy a quick nap?

Updating a fond memory or two

DearWife remembers a couple of old-fashioned granny blankets she grew up with, and asked me to make one for the BoyGoblin.

I had an old-fashioned granny blanket when I grew up too, and remember the gaps in the crochet making me feel cold and catching my toes.  DearWife remembers wrapping her fingers through the holes in her blanket and feeling cosy.

So, my challenge was to update the granny afghan, making it solid and cosy and lacy and cosy. It’s going to a hot climate too, so it needed to be fairly lightweight. Oh, and not scratchy – we’re all sensitive to wool over here.

And, of course, I still have a thing for hexes.

Lacy centre and solid border

And I think I might have cracked it. And Best of all, I can make 2 or 3 or these a day on the train to work.

Lovely yarn

I’ve picked a set of grey foamy greens from Red Heart’s Bamboo Ewe. Not easy to get hold of over here, but a delight to work with, and quite reasonably priced.

I wanted blue greys, like the colour of a dark twilight sky, with a red or yellow highlight, but you can see here how the oceany greens won me over.

The yellow yarn is for some the sky-themed motifs that will be appliquéd on the bottom corner when I’m done.

Here are the prototypes – the plane is just how I imagined it (just need to extract the pattern now) but the balloon needs work.

The pink protoype yarn was binned last night -
its horrible to work with

My studio assistant has the final word...