Blanket

I once went to a fancy dress party dressed in a patchwork knitted blanket with a hole in the middle for my head, and tied around my waist to keep it on. When asked what I was dressed as, I replied, 'A blanket'. What I was thinking I have no idea. My other fancy dress moments that I remember are a Pierrot clown, and a 1920s woman. The clown was the best one, and I still have a picture of that which I quite like. It was when I was about 16, and my Mum made the costume. Anyway, this blanket is not to wear. It has taken me about three years to complete. The lockdown has meant that I have finished it more quickly than I would have done. It is from an idea of the designers Arne and Carlos, which is to just knit two rows of a colour then change. I have enjoyed the process of choosing colours. Sometimes there has been a theme, (rainbow, daisies, ice-cream) and sometimes just what looks good to me. Occasionally randomness has been involved. It is very mindless knitting, and I can even do the stitches without looking, so without the need to wear my glasses. 

The blanket has 275 coloured rows, so 550 knitted rows. Each row has 254 stitches. That is 139,700 stitches altogether. Each row takes about 10 minutes to knit. 5500 minutes, or approximately 92 hours. Assuming an eight hour day that is 11.5 days. At £10 an hour that would be £920. Good job I am not charging myself for my time. And worryingly, I tend to knit in the evenings while watching TV, so that is a lot of TV!

 I decided to knot the ends of the yarn rather than sew in all the ends. I really don't like sewing in ends, and this many ends would be extremely tedious, and add another day's work to the blanket. Knotting them was quick and easy, and meant that all I had to do then was trim them. That was fun. (It really was!) Oliver came to observe what I was doing. He got on the new ironing board I am using the other day, and ruined its pristine surface with his long sharp claws. It made a good surface for trimming the ends anyway.