The wool-eater blanket

I came across this crochet design on Flickr and it really fascinated me. It was designed by Sarah London who has a really inspiring blog with amazing colours and patterns. She had made available a free downloadable tutorial for this pattern. This is still available here.
It took me a long time to get the hang of it even with the excellent photographed instructions. This little bit above took me about 2 hours!
However, once I got the hang of it there was no stopping me! I was also very proud of myself as this was 'proper' complicated crochet from a pattern!
It is very addictive! I kept adding more rings of colours, using the lovely Rooster wool that I already had (left over from selling their kits in our shop a few years ago - we had ordered a ball of each of their colours to use for merchandising, they somehow found their way back to the sewing room...).
Some people actually prefer the back! It has a lovely crinkly texture that reminds me of lichen.

When I got to the pink I decided to stop and make another one and that meant I needed more wool. I have been ordering the Rooster DK Almerino wool from the Laughing Hens website. Very efficient and friendly. As you will have worked out by the name it does use a lot of wool!
I thought I would try 4 and see how they looked joined together to make a blanket. Sarah did show a way to join then by just crocheting the edges of the 'scallop' shapes together. But I didn't like the 'holiness' of this (sorry Sarah!) so I tried my own solution. I crocheted the first half of a 'ring' in cream and then joined the square to another finished square, right sides together, with double crochet.
I does look a bit bumpy on the back but I still think I prefer it and it is very quick to do.
So now I have finished the 4 (see first photo) I have decided it really isn't big enough and have decided to make it with 9. When all 9 are crocheted together I will finish off the edges with the lovely scallop shape.
There is a 'wool eater' group in Flickr if you would like to see some more.
Better get back to crocheting now - 5 more to go!
NB I have now put together a pack of all the wools I used to make this blanket which you can buy at our website here