The Sky Blanket - June

 

And the Sky Blanket continues.  I'm still managing to keep up, but our social lives are starting to pick up again as lockdown is reduced.

I thought I'd explain how I make my bumpy cloud squares today.  All my squares are knitted with double strength DK - so two strands held together, which allows me to have more colour variety.  For these squares you need 4 strands of DK.  Two of blue to make your sky and two of cloud colour - white or white and grey or just grey.

 

So cast on 12 stitches in sky colour.

Row 1:  Knit in sky colour.

Row 2: Purl in sky colour.

Row 3: Knit 3 stitches in sky colour, add your cloud colour and purl 3 stitches.  Make sure you bring your cloud colour to the back of your work and knit 3 stitches in sky colour.  Purl the last 3 stitches in cloud colour.

Row 4: Purl 3 stitches in sky colour, knit 3 stitches in cloud colour, purl 3 stitches in sky colour and knit 3 stitches in cloud colour.

Repeat these 4 rows 2 more times.  

Row 13: Knit in sky colour.

Row 14: Purl in sky colour.

Row 15: Knit in sky colour.

Cast off all stitches and sew in all your ends.  Leave a nice long tail of sky colour to sew into the rest of the blanket.

Beech Bonsai

I've been learning about and trying my hand at bonsai.  With two little trees sitting in pots I was very happy, then 'im outdoors bought me a present.  A beech tree he had dug up at a job.

The poor thing must be at least 5 years old, but has been hacked back a few times and looks like it didn't have much room too grow.

So I potted it up and had a proper look at it.  I cut a few crossed branches off and cut its main branched back a bit as it was getting too tall for what I wanted it for.  There was one branch which cut in, but if I could convince it to bend out, it would much inprove the shape of the tree, so I wired it up and then left the poor thing to get over the shock.  

I was very happy to see it produce leaves at the end of May.  It looked like a proper tree!  But now two of the top branches crossed over each other so I added some more wires to push them out, much improving the little trees shape at the same time.

I know that I should really cut back some of that new growth to encourage more growth but it seems to mean.  Maybe later in the year.

Persian Tiles Eastern Jewels Crochet Blanket

 Last year I was given a crochet kit for the Persion Tiles blanket in the Eastern Jewels colour way by Jane Crow.  But then COVID happened and I couldn't deal with such a big project.

This year I was working on a knitting project when I ran out of wool!  In lockdown and unable to get anymore I looked for something else to do and came across the crochet kit.

I have to say I didn't really like the colours when I first got them out.  And even when making the sections I didn't really like some of them.  It proably didn't help that quite a lot of it was made in artificial light in the evenings.  I also hated making the little crosses.  They were so hard to get even!  I had to undo the first two octagons when I'd done all of them to redo the crosses, they were that bad!

The magic happened when I started to put the pieces together.  Suddenly the colours looked great and the whole thing sang!  Seeing them in daylight also made them look much better.  This is a summer blanket.

I really enjoyed making it and look foward to using it.  The sort of thing to drape over your shoulders while sitting in the garden in the evening. Maybe on one of 'im ourdoors new benches.