Then there was the news of a friend with a baby on the way. Lovely, lovely news and an opportunity! An opportunity to make a blanket. THIS blanket. The one that had been squirrelled away, waiting....
A beautiful pattern that called for a simple colour palette. I chose yarn: springy, pingy, bouncy 4ply merino yarn in white. (Debbie Bliss Rialto 4ply)
I went to study the pattern, it was in Russian! I could follow the chart for the hexagon, which was all I needed, and I went on my way with my yarn and my hexagon pattern to do my own thing.
(I have since discovered that google chrome, and other such internet magic, will translate Russian quite nicely. It takes a while for me to catch up with these things!)
I started the hexagons in the summer. You can catch a glimpse of some of them in the garden here.
Then the summer finished, school started and Christmas loomed, all at once. The baby was nearly here and the blanket needed to be finished.
I had started piecing some of the hexagons together as I went along. The blanket would be rectangular. A blanket-y kind of shape. Something that fits nicely in all manner of baby-holding receptacles.
It started to become clear that something was eating away at my motivation to finish the blanket (not an unusual position for me to be in). The blanket-y rectangular shape would need lots of fiddling about with half-hexagons and wibbly wobbly edges that would need straightening up. Not insurmountable, just not much fun, and the closer I got to the point of "much fiddling about", the slower my progress became. I was quite happy with my little hexagons, straight forward little meditations in lovely white yarn. Nice and relaxing. Why did I need to straighten the edges?
Truth is I didn't need to. Blankets don't really need corners, they need to be soft and snuggly and warm and lots of other cosy, blanket-y things. So this blanket would be a big cosy hexagon. Much easier, and I think much nicer too.
So, in all, 61 little hexagons into one big hexagon. Simple to work out and simple to piece together. Start with a hexagon in the middle, then 6 surrounding that, next round is 12, then 18, then 24. Joining the hexagons around the edge of the previous hexagons each time.
Can you see how all the hexagons start to disappear the further away you get? I love this pattern.
A final row of dc around the whole thing and some tassels on the corners to finish. So simple, soft, cosy, blanket-y, and finally made!!
LOVELY finish, and thank you for sharing your design layout process. Beautiful.
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