Wonderwool Blanket in WYS Wensleydale Gems

Our plans for Wonderwool are forging ahead and one of the big things that I will be doing for it is designing a knitted blanket/afghan to be available at the show as a kit.  Ruth and I obsessed about different yarns and prices and colours for quite a while before finally plumping for Wensleydale Gems from West Yorkshire Spinners.  The yarn will arrive for my sample this week and I've chosen colours to match our shop livery.  We've also put together other colourways which will be available for those of you that don't like greens and blues!   It's amazing when matching colours how shades that look as though they will be amazing together really don't work.  A good example of this can be pink and grey which work well together in blocks but in patterning can merge together when fairisled.

I've knitted a couple of afghans before (pictured below) both of which were from book called Great North American Afghans.  I took most of the designs from there, then added a few of my own -- a dalek on Lawrence's blue toned one , tumbling blocks, a guitar, Dr Who images and and R2D2 (or it might be C3po) on Tash's. It's fun using different techniques for each block and if you want to be creative yourself it's not to big a project to create one square.  As you don't have the entire piece of knitting in your lap the project doesn't get too unwieldy either.  Richard also had an afghan to take to  university but his isn't blockwork -- it's the fluorescent yellow and purple one pictured (the picture doesn't do justice to the true brightness of it!).  

The Wonderwool blanket will be constructed from squares which will each showcase a technique or design.  Depending on the size of blanket chosen some of the squares will repeat.  The background colour of my version is cream with the blues and greens from our shop colours creating a geometric pattern.   I want to create a blanket that knitters can pick and choose the overall pattern, so if a square is too tricky or too fussy for them, it can be swapped for another.  I'll provide a guide to the order for sewing up the squares but it will be a guide not a rule!  

I'll keep blogging the progress of the blanket.  It's a daunting project but I'm really going to enjoy the challenge.

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