Homespun Blankets

My sheep have mostly come from Texel stock.  Texel wool is not as fine and soft as most wool breeds, in fact, Texels are mostly considered a meat breed and their wool is not valued.

I refuse to let this mean that a large portion of the wool from my sheep is no good for anything.  I'm stubborn like that.  I had made socks from my homespun wool, they were stiff and a little scratchy, so I wasn't going to even think about knitting a jersey from it.  Although, I have learned that using bigger needles makes them less stiff and I have knitted jerseys from some of the softer, finer wool.  I started thinking about what I could make with all of this wool that wouldn't necessarily be next to the skin.

I found tutorials online for Corner to Corner (often abbreviated to C2C) crochet.  They sit nice and flat, much better than a Granny Square blanket.  The edges stay straight and even, much better than any other type of crochet I've ever tried.  They work up easily and can safely be stopped and put aside in the middle of a row as they don't require any/much counting.

I noticed, rewatching the tutorial that I've linked to, I do them slightly differently.  I use trebles rather than doubles, but I start with the same chain of six and use the same chain of three when I start a new cluster.

I made a blanket or bedspread for my bed.  We have a King Size bed.  I tried to work it out as approximately 3m sq to allow for the blanket to hang over the sides and foot, but this has come out somewhat bigger than that.

It was a wonderful thing to work on over winter.  Especially once I reached a point that it could cover my feet.  The down side was it was huge and heavy and turning it over to do the next row required standing up and juggling several balls of wool and often, shifting the cats who loved it too.

Those are my feet underneath - I had the foot rest up on the lazyboy.

It's a great blanket on our bed in winter.  It's heavy and warm.  It's now the only blanket we add to our bed for the changing season.

Very quickly, my children wanted one each too.  I vowed and declared that I would NOT be doing another one all in one piece, so I made one in squares that I joined with separate stripes.

Queen sized bed.

Making this one, I learned just how much I really hate sewing pieces together and trying to match up the patterns between them.

So for the one I made for my son and daughter-in-law, I chose to compromise.  This was made in four full length panels.

This allowed for some fun reversing of direction up the middle, which they both loved.

I have also made a smaller blanket out of acrylic yarns for my Granddaughter, but I can't seem to find a good photo of it - I'll provide one when I can.

Next on the list is one for my oldest daughter and son-in-law and then another for the grandchild on the way.

Each one takes months to make. They weigh at least 5 kg and use approximately two whole fleeces each.

We love them.