I started laying out my patches of hexagons on my living room floor on the weekend, I just wanted to have a ‘play’ I hadn’t put them all out in a while. Mind you I still had 4 balls of patches left to make….

Or did I?

As I was laying it out, I wondered whether my first plan was the correct one. That is 4 x 5 rosette patches rather than 5 x 5 rosette patches. My reassessment had nothing to do with the fact that there was still 4 balls of Noro staring me in the face. But the blanket was fairly square at 4 x 5, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I continued laying out all the patches with the single and half hexagons which filled in the gaps.

Sewing it up has been strenuous work, a real ‘work-out’ in my living room. Oh how I wished I had the foresight of inviting a few Richmond Knitters over to give me a hand! I was sewing all day long, until my body just said no more. There’s still plenty more seams to sew before I can get it off the floor.

I’m going to use the 4 remaining balls for the border… and huzzah! I won’t need to buy anymore yarn!

I’ve begun listening to Haruki Murakami’s ‘What I talk about when I talk about running’, I’m really liking it. I’m taking a little break from Anne Tyler’s ‘A spool of blue thread’, even though I’ve listened to most of it. I’m sure I’ll get back to it, but for the moment I’m finding the underlying theme of getting old and dying a little depressing.

 

It’s great to have a goal, a long-wished for colourful blanket for our bed, hexagons no less.

But ‘the getting down to it’ is the hard part. No veering off and doing something else. I have to stay focussed. Blankets take a long time, even the chunky ones.

8 more balls to go, not including the border yarn…

I finished listening to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt last week. 32 hours, it was a slog, but well worth it, every minute of it. It was such an engrossing book, so well written, so well read.

I’ve begun listening to A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler. She is one of my favourite authors, but so far I must say this book is not really grabbing me. It’s the first Anne Tyler I’ve ‘listened’ to, so I don’t know whether it’s the reader or the narrative that’s making me wonder, did Anne Tyler really write this? I get that it’s a totally different book to The Goldfinch, so perhaps the reader is just not doing it for me? I’ll let you know next week.

There is no other way to describe my enthusiasm for wanting to complete my hexagon crochet blanket.

After knitting with the Richmond Knitters on Monday night (and inspired by my conversation with Blanket Queen Extra-ordinnaire, Katie), I felt inclined to work out just how much I had left to do.

Hexagons are not squares, so the only way I could figure things out was by drawing a schematic. I had 24 balls of the Noro Taiyo to begin with, each ball makes 10 hexagons roughly. And each rosette is made from 7 hexagons. I’d also decided I was going to ‘finish’ the edges, so that they will be straight and I would also be needing a bunch of half-hexagons. Clearly I needed a drawing to work all this out.

I began by drawing a 4 x 6 rosette blanket (with the edges filled in), that wasn’t working, too narrow. Then I drew a 4 x 5 rosette blanket… it seems like it will be big enough… then I thought, why not go for a 5 x 5 rosette blanket? I’ll have just enough for all the rosettes, the filling-in hexagons and the half hexagons. Then (at my leisure) I can pick up another ball or 2 to do the finishing border… I’m super inspired by Dover and Madden’s blanket. Whilst my blanket will have a completely different look to it, hers is so pretty and I appreciate her explanation of making square edges.

So I’ll need:

25 rosettes (7 hexagons each)

50 single hexagons (as filling in the gaps hexagons)

15 half hexagons.

So far I have:

15 rosettes (10 to go)

42 single hexagons (8 to go) and

12 half hexagons (3 to go).

I love goals.