In and Out of the Stash: Charity Blankets

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Charity Blankets

I have mentioned before a group that makes blankets for charity – Western Canadian Oddball Blanket Society. Each blanket is made up of 6 sections of 6 inches each plus an edging. Each section is knitted (or crocheted) by a different person and then passed on to the next crafter. Although the name of the group is Western there are now knitters and crocheters from all over Canada involved. Currently the majority of the blankets are donated to the NICU at Foothills Hospital in Calgary.

Last year I crocheted a complete blanket so at the beginning of this year I decided to crochet a preemie size blanket.(Preemie size blankets are roughly 24 inches square.) Basically it is a large granny square with a shell edging.

In February it was my turn for a strip on a regular blanket. I was the fifth person on this blanket and it was being worked in various shades of blue. I chose a chevron pattern in a silver blue shade.

I have to say this was my favourite blanket to work on as the knitting was wonderful and the colours well chosen.

In May I was the second person on another blanket and chose a heart pattern. I love going through my stitch pattern books and choosing a pattern that I think will be interesting for me to knit as well as suiting the blanket and has more or less the right count of stitches for the blanket. The challenge for this blanket was choosing a colour that was in my stash but would go with the colour started on the blanket.

At the beginning of May the board issued a challenge – fast-track blankets – each board member started a blanket and with bribery and cajoling encouraged others to join. I worked on two of these, even though I did not have much time I wanted to do my part. For one of them, it was decided that each person would work their 6-inch strip and send to the organizer to put together and work a border. The yarn I used was highly variegated so I worked a simple broken rib so that there was some pattern but it does not pull in the way that ordinary rib does.

The other fast track blanket was worked in the normal way, being passed from knitter to knitter, and I was the third person. I was in rather a quandary when I received it as the first two knitters had both worked garter stitch and I really did not want to work garter stitch. Because garter stitch has a high rows per inch gauge, it is not actually as fast a knit as you would expect it to be. As I was the third person on the blanket, I decided that it would be OK not to work garter stitch and would also give following knitters a choice. But it couldn’t be an all-over stocking stitch pattern as there had to be texture to go with the garter stitch. Although I had just worked a ribbed section, a rib pattern of some description seemed the best, so I chose this textured rib pattern.