Yarn List for the Moody Blues Blanket

Hello again. Here we are halfway through March already and my first blanket of the year is done and dusted.

It’s a celebration of the blues this time, something which I had to challenge myself to do, as the colour blue has not featured much in any of my designs to date. I can’t really say why, as it’s a colour I wear a lot myself, but it’s out of my comfort zone when it comes to designing with colour.

However it’s a favourite of many of you, as you were quick to tell me, so I collected together every shade of blue in my yarn stash, and put on my thinking cap. I had decided early on that I would add a contrasting colour to provide a balance for all the blues, and chose shades of pink for this.

The thing is, once I started I came to really enjoy working with this colour palette, and I’m very pleased with the result. Proof that it’s good to push yourself out of your comfort zone sometimes.

The blanket progressed well, and a few weeks ago I put the final stitches in. As always, the next step would be to publish the Yarn List, and then knuckle down to the pattern writing.

But the fates were against me, and following a recent agonising trip to A&E after an accident with my knee, I was left immobilised with torn ligaments. That meant my upstairs studio was out of bounds, so pattern writing has had to be put on hold.

It’s so frustrating, but I have to be patient and let things heal. The studio is ready and waiting for me when my knee allows me to get upstairs, and meantime I’ve managed to put together the Yarn List for you.

So let’s have a chat about that today.

Many of you have asked for the Yarn List, especially if you are on the other side of the world from the UK, as deliveries can take quite a while. So that’s why I’ve published it today.

As you can see, there are a lot of colours – but that’s par for the course for me and my blankets, as many of you will know already. It’s mostly Stylecraft Special yarns though, which is the likeliest yarn for people to have in their stash, so hopefully you may already have some of the colours. I’ve put the actual amount used of each colour in the right hand column to help you decide if you have enough already in your stash.

There are three blues which look very similar – all the denim shades are close in tone, but I think they are all useful in the blanket, and provide the main type of blue tone which sets the colour palette. The colour reproduction in the peg photos is not brilliant, and they look almost identical, but there is in fact a difference.

You will see that some of the colours, Cream and Soft Peach for example are only used in small quantities whereas others, particularly those where the amounts are printed in red in the above list, use up almost the whole ball.

This is where you need to consider your tension. If you have a tendency to crochet quite loosely you may use a little more yarn than I did. In that case you might be safer ordering an extra ball of these colours so that you don’t run short. That’s up to you.

The yarns are all available from http://www.woolwarehouse.co.uk who ship worldwide.

In the UK they might also be found in small independent yarn shops, and of course it’s always good to support local businesses.

The blanket measures approx 57inches (145cms) square, making it a generous sized throw for a sofa.

The size of hook I’ve used throughout is 4mm, and all the yarns are Double Knit weight, premium acrylic and machine washable.

Lastly, I’m going to make a start on writing the pattern, but I apologise in advance that this will take a little longer than normal, due to my pesky knee.

I hope you like my Moody Blues blanket, and I’ll be back as soon as I can with the pattern and videos!

Bye for now,

Marion x