Crocheted Eyes Blanket

Crocheted Eyes Blanket

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Big Crocheted Eye Sample

Big Crocheted Eye Sample

I have a bunch of red & black donated yarn that I wanted to make into a blanket. I went poking around for a suitable pattern and here’s what I found. I thought this would look great! So, I started to make a motif and what I got was that big hexagon you see to the right.

Yuck! I tried to like it, but I hate it. It’s just big & ugly. The pattern says to use lots of colors, but I really don’t like this at all. I can’t give away something like that. It just disturbs me.

Small Crocheted Eye Sample

Small Crocheted Eye Sample

I wanted to keep the hexagon idea & use red & black. I came up with the two smaller hexagons.

Better, huh? It’ll be interesting to look at with the different centers randomly strewn around the blanket. I’ve decided to call them “EYES”. Plus, this is a great way to use up those small balls of yarn just hanging around.




Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Crocheted Eyes Sneak Peak

Crocheted Eyes Sneak Peak

I have a bunch of ‘eyes’ done for the blanket already. They work up really fast. I stitched a few together so you could get a sneak peak at the blanket.




Thursday, July 21, 2005

Crocheted Eyes Blanket

Crocheted Eyes Blanket

I have made 35 eyes for the Eyes Blanket. That’s just over 1/3rd of the eyes I want to make. I’m going to start with about 100 eyes and see how large the blanket will be. I suspect I will be making more than 100 eyes. I may try to locate some hexagon ‘grid’ paper to start mapping out the blanket.




Monday, July 14, 2008

Three years later, I pick up this project again. About a month after the last update, I went through a divorce, so I needed time (ok a lot of time) to regroup.

Anyway… I have 55 eyes done now. Once I hit 100 eyes, I’ll see how big the blanket is going to be and decide where I’ll go from there – lap blanket or full-size blanket.



Comments about the eyes blanket from my previous blog…

Denise Says:
July 14th, 2005
Yes, I can see why that large hexagon would bother you. If you look at the center five rounds, it looks like a staring jaundiced blue eye, with hellfire in the pupil.

I’d rip it out and redo it!

Oddly enough, I think large hexagons would work if you made the center rounds black, white, red, (or white, red, black) and continued outward in random colors. At some point, it would look rather like those ojos de dios that so many of us did in summer camp.

But the smaller eyes are charming, and should look quite nice when they’re all stitched together. The honeycomb effect of the black outer edge should form an elegantly dramatic framework for displaying the colors!

Denise Says:
July 21st, 2005
Darn it, Jeanne, now you’ve got me trying to figure this one out.

If you make 103 hexagons, you can create a blanket that is 9 hexes wide (in a sort of wobbly zigzag way), and 11 or 12 hexes high (again, the wobble).

Because hexes are basically (!) fused equilateral triangles, if you take the side as one unit, the “diagonal” (point to point, through the center) will be two units, and the height (center of side to center of side, through the center of the hex) will be the square root of three units.

This means that the blanket I’ve just described would be about 13.5 units wide, by 20 units high.

So if your hexes are about 4 inches high, the blanket would end up roughly 31″ by 46″

I think. In theory. If I haven’t messed up the arithmetic.

Of course, if there is anything I’ve learned from crochet, it’s that crocheted items (even when they are supposed to be nice standard geometric shapes) feel no obligation to conform to plane geometry. They do what they want, when they want. And it all works out somehow, but the measurements can get a bit wonky in the meantime.

(And if you find proper hex grid paper (or a printable image that doesn’t look like unantialiased awfulness), let me know where to get some, please? I was looking for some several years ago, but the closest I could find was some isometric triangle stuff. This would have been okay, except it was a bit more expensive than I wanted. (I was planning on doing a lot of colored pencil test layouts.) Not sure how I worked around it. Or if I ever did. I may have packed that idea in mothballs. At any rate, I would love to have some hex grid paper. Hmmm… I wonder…. A CAD program might work…. Gotta think about this one!)

Jeanne, Queen of the Green Beans Says:
July 21st, 2005
I found a really cool site that generates all kinds of graph papers….

Free Online Graph Paper

This printed very well for me AND you can even choose the size of the squares, hexagons, trapezoids *AND* you can choose the color you want the lines to be. They have other type of paper too! Dots, Iso-dots, and other stuff – lots of fun to play with!

Denise Says:
July 22nd, 2005
Ohhhh…. Cool! I’m bookmarking this one!

Granny Square Blanket Completed

Granny Square Blanket

Friday, March 11, 2005

Here is a couple of picture of a granny square blanket I have started with donated yarn. I’m hoping to have the entire blanket made from that yarn. I have around 15 of those squares made now.



Monday, July 4, 2005

I have almost all the squares done for my next blanket. I need to do three more yellow granny squares.

I’ve already mocked up the pattern for the blanket. Since I’m working with donated yarn, the pattern isn’t exactly symmetric.

Yellow Crocheted Square

Yellow Crocheted Square

Pink Crocheted Square

Pink Crocheted Square

Multi-Colored Crocheted Square

Multi-Colored Crocheted Square

Blue Crocheted Square

Blue Crocheted Square

Granny Square Blanket Mockup

Granny Square Blanket Mockup




Wednesday, July 6, 2005

I finished up the last few yellow squares and got all of the rows stitched together. Now, I’m working on putting the rows together – have 3 stitched together in this picture. I’m amazed at how quickly this blanket is coming together.

Granny Square Blanket Mockup

Granny Square Blanket Mockup

I may have all of the rows stitched together by the end of today. Then, it’s a matter of putting the edging around the blanket.

The edging is going to be lavender. I’ve been pulling colors from the multi-colored blocks for the solid colors and purple/lavender is one of them. Hey, you knew this wasn’t going to be a boy’s blanket anyway…

I’m starting to look into charities that may take my crocheted creations. I’ll keep you updated on what I learn & where I end up donating my first two blankets.



Thursday, July 7, 2005

I *just* finished the granny square blanket. Here’s a picture of it:

Granny Square Blanket Completed

Granny Square Blanket Completed

I figured out a ‘cheat’ on the granny squares… The directions I have say to end off after each round. Of course, they assume you are going to use a different color. I wanted solid blocks of color, or colors in the case of the varigated sherbert yarn. So at the each of a round, I simply chained 3, flipped the granny square over, and started the next round. Ok, maybe YOU knew about doing that already, but I didn’t – so let me feel proud of myself that I figured that out!

I stitched the blocks together using the leftovers of the sherbert, blue, pink, and yellow yarns – matching them up with the squares as best I could. Waste not – want not, right? I am proud to announce that the sherbert is all gone. GONE I say! LOL


Here are the comments about this blanket from my previous blog:

Denise Says:
April 9th, 2005
I see what you mean about sherbet! Those squares are delightful. And the blue/green/white combination is lovely, too. (I’m going to have to work on traditional granny squares at some point, just because I love the look!)

Denise Says:
July 7th, 2005
Wow.

Double wow, actually.

You’re zipping on the assembly, and you’ve changed the layout of the site.

I’m impressed.

I’m doubly impressed!

(And the lavender should be perfect. Just the right touch to balance the yellow and accent the other colors.)

Jeanne Says:
July 7th, 2005
I just changed the layout today. I was thinking I needed two rows for all the links & garbage I seem to want to add to this blog.

I just finished the blanket & took a picture. I’ll be adding a new post shortly 🙂

Denise Says:
July 7th, 2005
Awesome!

And I certainly never thought about doing squares that way. I just slipstitched over to the next open space and then chained up three from there. Learn something new every day!

Blue Green Crocheted Blanket

Blue Green Blanket

I just finished the first blanket to be donated. I started it in June 2004 and poked along on it here & there. This is the first blanket I’ve ever crocheted – pretty good, huh? It’s more of a throw.

Some thoughts on this pattern:

Blue Green Crocheted Blanket

Blue Green Crocheted Blanket

Weaving the yarn through a double crochet mesh was easy enough, but it created a lot of waste. I had to make sure the yarn lengths were long enough to weave through the entire throw. So, I had to over estimate length and cut off the extra when I evened up the fringe. Needless to say, a lot of wasted yarn went into my garbage can. I kept looking at thinking what a waste & if it were a blanket made from squares there wouldn’t be so much waste.

Because of the waste, I probably won’t make this pattern again. I like the end result, but the amount of waste really bothered me.

I completed this blanket February 2005.