Waffle-blanket

What I really wanted to show you, though, was this 'new' blanket, which now lives in my aunt's couch, and which my cousins were so good as to photograph for me.

My mother and grandmother made it together when my mother was around 20 and still living at home. This was yet another blanket made from scraps left over by my grandmother, which, as my mother says, gives you an idea of how many things my grandmother actually knitted, producing scraps for at least three rather large blankets with many different colors!



The pattern is called waffle crochet, and as soon as my mother saw the pictures of the blanket, she remembered how it goes. That was lucky, because I was having a bit of trouble deciphering it, especially with all the color changes! But it's quite simple, really. Each row is made up entirely of double crochet (or treble) stitches. For the first two stitches in the pattern, you insert your hook into the top of the two double crochet stitches in the row below. These will be the ones that stick out towards the back. For the next two double crochet stitches, though, instead of inserting the hook into the tops of the stitches below, you go behind the column, if you will, of the double crochet stitch in the row below. These stitches will be the ones sticking out towards you.

Because of the color changes (two rows of each color), the waffle pattern really doesn't come out so clearly, but have a look at Suburban Jubilee: Waffle Crochet Tutorial - From Blankets to Dishcloths for a gorgeous example of the real waffle look!

The color changes make quite a nice look on the wrong side, as well, although the effect is somewhat less calming than on the right side. And again, I am loving the freshness of the color 'choices'. Since these scraps are all from projects of my grandmother's, you can imagine that future pics of her work won't be dull, either!

Sock-proud

So yeah, socks! Most of my woollen socks have been knitted for me by my grandmother, and I'm starting to wear them again, after a little summer break. I wear them with pants, skirts, ankle boots, ballerinas, nothing else, and occasionally high heels, which I actually prefer to wear with stripey socks. I feel like it makes them seem less pretentious.

I know you think I despise acrylic or polyamide yarn, but in socks, I have to admit it makes sense. Wonderful as it is, wool wears out fairly quickly when rubbed against a warm foot and the inside of a shoe. So my grandmother always buys special 'sock-yarn' with 20% polyamide to go along with the wool. I had a pair of 100% wool socks which were worn out after one winter, so I'm grateful for the synthetic element - otherwise, I would have to do a whole lot more darning than I'd like!

My grandmother used to take us shopping for yarn in the colors that we would like, but one day, I thought, 'Wait a minute, what does she do with all the leftover yarn?' It turned out that she used it for darning socks and didn't think any of us would want a pair of socks made from yarn scraps. But I really wanted a pair like that, and so she made them for me. The funny thing is, I had expected a pair of socks with completely random colors, but being the neat and orderly woman that she is, of course she had coordinated the scraps so that the two socks had precisely the same types of stripes in exactly the same pattern! I loved them, but I did mention to her that she needn't bother with being systematic the next time - she could just use up the scraps that she had. So now we have sort of a deal that when she has enough scraps for a pair of socks, she makes some for me.

Anyway, my sister and I dug out some socks to show off how we wear them. Don't be afraid to show your pride in a pair of home-knitted socks, wear them for the world to see! - And please share some pictures with the rest of us!

A teenage blanket

Now this blanket was made by my mother when she was a bit older - about 14 or 15 years old. By this time, she had realized that it is so much easier to make one big square, rather than first crocheting lots of little ones, crocheting edges on them and finally assembling the whole thing. Her first blanket was 8 x 15 squares, so that makes four yarn-ends per square (if we count the black edge), a total of 480 ends to weave in!! And after that, she had to sew them all together, which must also have made a few more ends. By my count, this new blanket would have produced about 60 yarn ends...

So yes, as a teenager, she chose the easier method of one big square, elongated with extra bands of color at either end to make it rectangular. Unfortunately, this large piece of knitting was rather more difficult to carry around than the small squares had been, so she did most of the work on this blanket at home. So if you decide to start making a blanket, it might be worth considering that if you are a sociable knitter, you might have to choose the more cumbersome (but certainly no less charming) method of the small granny squares!

As for colors, this time, she had some larger batches of left-over yarn from a blanket which my grandmother had made some time previously. This blanket (which I will be showing you soon) was made as a black background with small yellow and orange squares dotted around. This meant that there was quite a lot of yellow and orange for my mother's blanket, which she used for the outer, and thus longer rounds. In the center, she used small scraps of yarn, which were more suitable for the short rounds. As you can see, though, she always used the scraps up completely so that some rounds changed color halfway.