My Winter’s Love blanket – it’s finished

Last weekend I made the last stitches on my Winter’s Love blanket. YAY – it is finished!

I really enjoyed working on it!

Here is a Short Summary

Winter‘s Love is the current Cal (Crochet-a-long) by Ana Morais Soares from One Skein of Love. The Cal already started on 22. November 2024. It is divided into 4 parts and part 4 – the last one – will already be published on Friday (13. December 2024). Time flies …
But it is never too late to get the pattern. It’s perhaps a little late to get the blanket ready for Christmas. But starting it at Christmas and finishing it for next year is certainly a very nice idea too.

In case you are interested, the pattern is available here.

During the last weeks I had the pleasure of testing this lovely pattern. I had a late start though. Due to our holidays I was only able to start working on it in the second half of October. Besides my normal life (and some health issues) it took me about 7 weeks to finish it. Late for the test – but nevertheless, 7 weeks are not too bad for finishing a blanket, I think. I am not a fast crocheter anyway!

My yarn and yarn amounts

It is the first time I have used Yarnsmiths Create DK. Yarnsmiths is an own brand from Wool Warehouse in the UK.

Create DK is an 100 % Acrylic yarn. It comes in 100 g balls and has a yardage of 290 m / 100g. It is currently available in 120 colours.

I decided to go with Claret Red (3090) and Off White (3045) for my blanket.

In total I needed

4 balls Off-White
6 balls Claret Red

I really like the quality of Create DK. It has a consistent thickness and is soft and smooth. It was absolutely fun to work with! I will have to get some more colours.

Finished Size of my blanket

My finished blanket is about 120 x 150 cm. That’s about 47 x 59 inch. I worked with a 4 mm hook.

My colour placement

After a first try (in the photo the strip on top), I decided to start my blanket with a dark background, having the motifs in white.
That means I started the foundation row in Off White (C1) and used Claret Red as C2.

I kept this scheme for the first 8 patterns of the blanket. For the last 3 patterns, however, I decided to swap the colours.

I have already written about the reasons for this in my previous post. There you will also find detailed information about what exactly I did to swap the colours. Besides there is also an overview of my detailed colour placement for all patterns of the blanket. Only the colours of the border are not listed there. Now, the slip-stitch round, front- and back layer and the joining round were all worked in Claret Red. That‘s it.

But, to make it easier, I have now also summarised my entire colour placement in a pdf file. So, if you are interested you can download it here

Well, that’s the end of another big crochet project. After that, I always have the feeling of falling into a kind of big hole. Do you know that?

I still have no idea what I’m going to do next. Unfortunately, I’m having problems with one of my eyes at the moment (and a few appointments at the eye doctor). So I think it’s going to be something small. Maybe some Granny Squares? Or something small for Christmas? Hm, let’s see!

Wish you a lovely time 💕

My previous posts about Winter‘s Love

Winter’s Love Cal

My Winter‘s Love blanket – A quick update

My Winter’s Love blanket – A quick Update

About a fortnight ago I showed you my current test project: Winter’s Love Cal. A new overlay mosaic pattern by Ana Morais Soares from One Skein of Love.
At that time, I had just finished about 2/3 of the blanket.

In case you missed my previous post you can read about it here

In the meantime the Cal started. Ana just released part 2 of the pattern. And yes, I am almost finished with my blanket!
All tails are knotted and cut! All slip stitches to start the border are done! And last night I started with the back layer of the border.

When I started my blanket a few weeks ago, I decided to replace Ana’s beautiful green (C1) with Off White and the cream (C2) with Claret Red. So I had a dark background and white motifs.

I really love the way how this turned out!

However, when I reached pattern 9, I had some doubts about my colour placement.

Due to my colour scheme the trees in pattern 9 were shown in white. In my opinion this didn’t go so well with the white baubles in pattern 8. I had already finished half of the pattern when I decided that it would be better to swap colours. That meant I had to go back some rows! I kept row 1 (Off White) and row 2 (Claret Red) in my old colour scheme. Then skipped row 3 of the pattern. It is a plain row of single crochet, so it did not influence the pattern. But this made it possible to continue in row 4 with Off White instead of Claret Red – and voilà, the colours had changed!

Changing the colour also had the advantage of giving the last pattern a dark background again. I liked that better as well.

Please note: If you decide to do the same for your blanket, you will have 1 row less in the number of rows. This also means that you will have 1 stitch less on the long sides when you crochet the slip stitches and the border.

Unless you do it like me. After I finished the last pattern, I added a row of single crochet in Off White. This way I started and finished the blanket with the same colour. But to be honest, it wasn’t the look that convinced me to do it. It was simply the fact that my slip stitches then had a contrasting background on both short sides. My eyes couldn’t have coped with anything else.

And here is my colour placement in detail

And a word about the yarn amounts:

So far I have used 4 balls of Off White and also 4 balls of Claret Red. There is nothing left from these balls. So with a different tension you might run short with these amounts.

Yarn is Yarnsmiths Create DK from Wool Warehouse in the UK. I worked with a 4 mm hook.

That’s all for today! I’m off to do a bit of Christmas decorating. And continue working on the border! Have a lovely time 💕