Crochet blanket for James

One of the annoying things about IVs is that you are forced to sit waiting whilst the drugs drip away. On some combination of meds you can by stuck for an hour for each drug, so you spend several hours a day attached to your drip stand (or handy light fitting!) being very bored.  I hate being bored and sitting around- drives me nuts! So to pass the time and do something useful I decided to do some more crochet and as I'd made a blanket for Sophie when she arrived it seemed about time nephew James got one too.  I've never been able to manage knitting, my stitches always got so tight I could never get the needles into the work! Crochet is a much better bet and I rather enjoy making lots of small motifs that then get seen together to make a blanket.  The blanket i decided to make consists of 35 granny squares in two colours.  I found a really nice acrylic yarn that came in red and cream; I can't use wool yarn as i am mildly allergic to it and it makes my skin red and itchy. This is really annoying as most yarns contain at last a small percentage of wool so my choice of yarn is pretty limited. After three weeks of IVs I'd managed most of the squares and i finished the last few this week.

Very large pile of squares!

Blocking the first batch of squares.

Having made the squares I then had to give them a block to get them nice and flat and even out their size.  My tension is still a little bit hit and miss and some of the squares were a bit different in size.  By pinning them all out onto a board and giving them a gentle steam and then letting them cool you can even out any little lumps and bumps and get each motif to be nearer in size.  To join the all together I used a slip stitch in red wool to make a fairly invisible seam.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I hope James will like it too.   Now I have to decide what my next sedentary project will be, as sadly I think Ill be back on the IVs shortly... at least I can make something fun and useful to alleviate the boredom!

Midway through joining all the squares together.

All joined together just the ends to weave in.

Finished!