2012 - Let's Get it Started. Crocheting for Charity

To get 2012 started on the right foot, I decided to focus on some crafting for others. Dawniedear, a Ravelry friend, does most of her knitting and crochet for charity, including an organisation that provides hats, etc, to the homeless.

I challenged myself to make at least 5 beanies for Dawn's charity before the 1st of March. While I was at it, I posed the challenge to the other members of Crochet Lovers Victoria on Ravelry. I'm happy to report many of the members have taken up the challenge with me! Some are making one or two beanies as they can, some taking the 5 beanie challenge, and some surpassing that number as well.

I did some stash diving and came up with yarn that was not slated for other projects and got to work. I was able to make 7 beanies by the March 1st deadline I set for myself. Some of them aren't the prettiest, but will go to helping keep some people warm during those cold Melbourne winter months.

Beanie #1Beanie #2
Beanie #3 Beanie #4

Beanie #5Beanie #6 Beanie#7

Another Ravelry friend, mareeknowscraft, is organising some blankets for donation to a nursing home in Eltham that was flooded out in the Christmas Day flood / hailstorm. Since I was already on a charity role...

The wool for this blanket was donated to me, and I decided to make it into a zig zag blanket. I just finished sewing in all the ends yesterday (my least favourite job), and now it is all ready to be taken to the home.

Bigger Than I Thought

Wow, the R2D2 blanket is going to be a bit bigger than I thought. My calculations, based on 2 inch squares, had the blanket at approximately 3.5 feet wide by 5.3 feet tall - and that's before adding the border.

Well, my squares all must be a smidge bigger than 2 inches as the blanket is currently 6' 8" tall - zoinks! That'll bring it to over 7 feet by the time the border is added on. I guess there's no need for me to worry about him growing out of it :)

R2D2 update... 180 squares made, of which 160 have been assembled. 418 squares left to go.

R2D2 Star Wars Blanket

I must be crazy. I've decided to make an R2D2 blanket for one of my nephews. Shhh, it's a suprise!

I'm going off a knitting graph I found at angelfire.com. But instead of using it as a knitting graph, I'm making a 2 round granny square for each "square" of the graph. That's a whopping total of 608 granny squares - yikes! (Special thanks to Shilo from Ravelry from whom I stole borrowed the concept).

I received the wool in the post five days ago, and I've been deligently working on making squares, weaving in ends and assembling some of the squares. To date I've made 129 squares, of which I've put 103 together. Not that I'm counting or anything. ;-)

Here's a looksy at how R2 is coming together.



It's so nice to actually be able to see him taking shape and coming together! It's a great motivator to keep me going.

I'm making this blanket out of Bendigo Woollen Mills 10 ply Luxury and a 5.0 mm hook. This is my first time working with the Luxury and it is divine. It is very soft and squishy and I really love it. I'm using shade 332 Lake for the blue, 342 Ghost for the white/light silver, 353 Koala for the gray/dark silver, and 304 black for the background. I used a bit of some 12 ply Wangaratta Mills red that I received in a karma swap for the lone red square.