Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Babette is Done!

Yippee, it's done, it's done!!!! Even after having to put it on hold for two weeks due to running out of the main colour, I still finished this sucker in less than a month. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm so proud of myself. I usually get "start-itis" - love starting things, but the finishing? Not so much.

Here are some (okay, a lot) of pics of the finished product.

babettefinal1

babettefinal2

babettefinal3

babettefinal4

babettefinal5

Okay, I'm off to go do my happy dance now :)

Edited to add: I posted the following information for a fellow Babette-maker on Ravelry and was told it was very useful. So, I've decided to post it here in case anyone else is interested.

SPECIAL NOTES - HOW MUCH YARN I USED…

Well, I used 14 colours - and they were all 200 gram balls. But with the exception of the almond/cream which I ended up using a total of 280 grams of, I had heaps left over of the other 13 colours.

Being a bit of a nerd, and so I’d know for future Babette making, I actually went and weighed all my balls at the end to see how much I’d actually used. So in addition to the 280 grams of almond, here’s what else I used.

Celery (light green) = 115 grams
Guava (dark green) = 49 grams
Aster (lavender) = 115 grams
Blueberry (dark purple) = 90 grams
Butternut (peach) = 98 grams
Pumpkin (orange) = 92 grams
Rose pink (light pink) = 86 grams
Lipstick pink (dark pink) = 88 grams
Maize (light yellow) = 76 grams
Seaquest (light turquoise) = 72 grams
Poseidon (dark turquoise) = 85 grams
Iris (blue) = 97 grams
Periwinkle (light blue) = 88 grams

So that’s 1431 grams all up, which includes the SC join and two rounds of SC border. The actual blanket probably weights a little bit less as that includes all the yarn I used… so tails have been eliminated. I used a 4mm hook and BWM 8ply wool.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Babette

At the beginning of the year, when I received my new 2010 shade card from Bendigo Woollen Mills, several of the colours really jumped out at me. I'd previously seen the Babette blanket pattern and was very keen to make one. I pulled the appropriate colours from the shade card & set them aside for future "Babette-making."

Fast forward to October (geez, where'd the time go) and I FINALLY ordered the wool to make a Babette. Isn't it pretty?

Of course, this very wool went on sale less than a week after I'd ordered it all, but hey, them's the breaks.

babettewool

I got to work that very day on making the Babette. The blanket is assembled in 10 different sections. I decided I would make the sections in order and assemble them as I go to help keep all those many, many squares organised. I also decided that I would follow the pattern as written, substituting my Bendigo Woollen Mills colours for the ones outlined in the pattern. The only main alteration I made was using a single crochet join instead of whipstitch.

It wasn't long before I had sections 1 through 5 complete.

babette1
Plus section 6....
babette2
Plus section 7...
babette3
And sections 8 and 9 ...
babette4

Then just as I was starting in to section 10 (the final section), I ran out of the cream/almond main colour! Oops. I quickly ordered some more. I was on such a roll and I'm so bummed I've had to put this project on hold for a week and a half now. Every day I wait for the wool delivery to come, but I'm still waiting... sigh...

In the meantime, my adorable doggie has given the blanket-thus-far her seal of approval.

babetteclancy

Now if the postie would just hurry up with that wool already!