watercolour-inspired blanket

This was a true labour of love - a watercolour-inspired blanket for my daughter Keira, on her 21st birthday.

Keira is a painter, exploring themes of light, water, mist and fog. So I wanted to create a painterly blanket for her birthday gift that evoked watery, natural colours.

With a starting point of a basket of beautiful handspun and handdyed yarn from my mum, and some lightweight possum-merino yarn (this one, from Loopine in Auckland), I used the Battenberg Blanket pattern by Sandra Paul, which comes with lots of great video tutorials and photos. I highly recommend it, especially if, like me, you’re not a super-experienced crocheter. The original version is made up in cream and bright colours, to evoke a sweet battenberg cake. I made my squares a bit larger and also looser in gauge, as I wanted to avoid a dense or heavy fabric.

I’m really happy with the finished piece and it was so good to be able to give it to Kee on her actual birthday! She let me take this picture in the car park outside her flat.

A few more details about this project:

• I used a 4mm hook and most of the yarns were 4-5ply, so it’s quite lightweight and airy

• I blocked the squares to a uniform size in batches as I went

• I sewed the squares together using a grey sock yarn (with a little nylon content) for seam durability

• It measures just over 220cms square - a good size for a queen bed

• I worked 3 rounds of single crochet in the grey possum yarn to finish it

• More details about how I made this can be found on my Ravelry page.