Waterlily pond

Waterlily pond is the name of the project I am working on at the moment and have been for the last 8 or 9 months...

It is a blanket made out of crochet blocks taken out of the book 200 Crochet blocks (go to http://www.amazon.com/Crochet-Blocks-Blankets-Throws-Afghans/dp/1931499683 to see the book in amazon, it has the look inside option). To make it basically you crotchet loads of squares of 15cm x 15cm and then you join them together to form a blanket.

With crochet blocks there is a huge variety of things and designs you can make, and with all the different patterns that are out there to make (the book I mentioned has 200 alone) the difficult part comes when having to accept you cannot make them all.


Well this project is formed out of 180 squares, and there are 4 different patterns:

Alhambra

Alhambra

Alternate bobbles

Alternate Bobbles

Lacy Cross

Lacy Cross

And of course, the Waterlily

Waterlily

When all the squares are sewn together it is supposed to resemble a pond with water lilies.

It has been taking forever to finish it, but at the moment I am in the blocking process, which is one of the last things you do when knitting or crocheting.

There are many different techniques for blocking. Since I do not own a blocking board, I bought 5 embroidery hoops and put a piece of cotton fabric on each of them, then embroidered a square of 15 x 15 cm, which is the measure that my finished squares should have,  so it would mark the shape for the squares to be attached to it.

Then I pinned the squares to the shapes:

Sprayed water to damp them and hung them to dry:

This is done in order to get all the stitches in the garment the same size in the FO (finished object, yes, more knitting terms) since most of us knit tighter some times, and looser others.

So it gets the squares from looking like this:

To this:

Now, the reason why we knit some stitches bigger than others, I am not sure about but I have a theory, below is an example:

You just had dinner and start to knit with a cup of tea next to you watching something nice on telly and your mind starts:

Ahh finally time to knit, this colour will look great with that yellow blouse (loose stitches), aw I will have to lose some weight so it fits me again though (tighter stitches), anyway my boyfriend loves me just as I am (loose stitches)... Or, does he? (tight stitches), well he said so (loose stitches), or is he just saying that so I stop asking? (tight stitches), maybe he just lies to me cause he can not bother to be honest with me! (tight stitches), and on top of that he thinks I am annoying! (tighter stitches), he must think that, otherwise he would make an effort to be honest with me (even tighter stitches), but obviously he does not care enough!!! (fingers start to turn blue), he must be with me only to have someone to clean the house! (the yarn is just about to break!)...

Boyfriend comes into the room and asks: have you seen the cello tape?

You: I am not your servant you liar! (throwing the knitting at him and storming out of the room)

Boyfriend's mind: hum… tight stitches again... good the tv is free now, I can watch football, yepieee!

...and this is why knitted garments need blocking :-)