Finishing off WIPs and starting a temperature blanket

Inbetween Christmas and New Year, in that quiet little lull when the weather was rubbish except for one day, I managed to get quite a bit of crochet done. I spent the time concentrating on finishing off items that have been neglected, otherwise known as my WIPs.

The above picture is my finished Frank O'Randle's Rings of Change tablecloth being blocked. I told you a few weeks ago when it was still a Work In Progress how I modified earlier rounds to make it into a tablecloth. It was big enough when it got to row 78 so I finished it there and added two rows of my own custom border. It's been drying on towels under my dining room table for the last 3 days, I'm giving it another day just to be sure.

Two cushions for my antique Edwardian chaise longue. One in granny squares and the other a very simple bobble stitch which is just dcs and dtrs, I should do a closeup so you can see the texture of it but I'll probably write it up as a free pattern so I'll save the close up for then, 

I spotted the stitch on a Dutch Pinterest board, I had to work out what the UK equivalents were of words like afstand, herhalen and doorgaan. Google Translate only gets you so far when it comes to technical crochet stitches. It was actually quite a lot of fun; I'm thinking if I ever need to get a proper job again, I may retrain as a linguist!

I also completed a throw for one of my armchairs, It needs blocking before it can be photographed. With Rings of Change taking up all the available blocking space at the moment, I'll save that for another day. 

Haven't I been good?! Three finished WIPs means I'm allowed to start a new project. There has been talk in some of the crochet groups I follow on Facebook about temperature blankets. The traditional time to start one is 1 January. 

The original link I followed was made in Bernat yarns but I've never used it and I don't have any. I have so much yarn in my stash, I wondered if I had enough equivalent yarn in other brands to get going. I have plenty of Stylecraft Special DK; I found I was only one colour short which I bought this morning from the Wool Zone in Oakham. Here are my colours, from left to right:

Plum, Petrol, Turquoise, Aspen, Grass Green, Kelly Green, Gold Sunshine and Tomato. 

The pattern I'm using is Lucy of Attic24's Granny Stripes.

The idea is that you crochet one row a day, the colour of the row varies depending on the temperature so at the end of the year, you have a woolly record of how warm (or cold!) it's been!

So far, all six days (at around midday) have been either Turquoise(1 to 6 degrees C) or Aspen (7 to 12)... it will be exciting to change to another colour, apparently it'll be getting quite a bit colder next week so I may have to get the Petrol (-5 to zero) out! I'm wondering if it'll ever be cold enough this winter to use Plum (below -6)!

Stay warm x

Socks of the day

Still laid up with my leg I'm afraid, I have had lots of messages praising my hand knitted socks and so I've taken another picture of the ones I have on today. Every nurse who has seen a pair of my knitted socks has complimented me on them, maybe I should have a "sock of the day" posting during my recuperation!

I went to have a follow up visit to the Consultant yesterday. It was a really frosty day here in Lincolnshire and the fracture clinic was packed with people who had fallen over on icy pavements so even though I had an appointment, we were late getting in to see him

There's a lump underneath the worst bit, the Consultant says it is internal bleeding, there's no way of knowing if it has stopped apparently; it won't start to get better til it has. For the last week, it's been about the same, pain free when it's on a cushion being elevated by the coffee table but it's sore when I put weight on it. For now, the Consultant advises me to rest it up, wiggle my toes and rotate my foot to keep blood circulating and my body should re-absorb the blood. I'm hoping it will start to improve sometime soon.

So that's the bad news; the good news is that I've been doing lots of crocheting and my ripple blanket is finished. Here it is draped over a chair in the lounge. It's not really the right colours for the lounge, I would've used a more restricted colour pallet (like those I used for the rocking chair cushion covers  which you can see in the background of the photo of my feet). This one is destined to be a picnic blanket and for emergencies to snuggle under if the heating goes kaput!

We've got tickets to go see Rival Sons this coming Saturday. We've had them for months and both of us were really looking forward to going, it's very rare to get to see a big band like Rival Sons at anything other than a stadium these days so to see them in a relatively small venue would be a real treat. The Blues Pills are supporting and by all accounts, they're really good. Another plus is that we're meeting up with an old friend we haven't seen socially for some time and it would be great to catch up with him and his family. The Consultant says it's up to me if I go to it if I think I can manage all the standing. I'm thinking it's a bit doubtful but I'm not giving up It's still three more days til Saturday so ......... COME ON YOU LEG!