I was in the thralls of doubt when I set myself the task to crochet a blanket for my broseph’s birthday, which when I started, gave me less than 4 weeks to complete. But yesterday afternoon, 30 minutes before we left for his birthday events, I finished it. Massive sigh of relief …

As I wrote in my first post, broseph and I worked together on the blanket design – I wanted to make sure I was making a blanket that he actually was going to like. After many e-mails and Excel magic, here is what we came up with … 

Mucho manly. Mostly gunmetal grey with stripes of red and grey and a final black border. When I first started crocheting it I wasn’t convinced of the pattern and colour choice. It took until the very end when I added the black border, which was the certain je ne sais quois it needed, and I was convinced. I became a bit jealous as I secured it in a gentleman’s belt to hand over to broseph.

Oh, and something I failed to mention, broseph is 6’3″, so I had my work cut out for me. I was determined to crochet him a suitably sized man blanket. Here are the deets –

– size 7 / 4.50mm crochet hook
– 160 stitches wide, double crochet throughout
– 16 rows of gunmetal grey in between stripe patterns
– one row of single crochet border in black followed by a second row of double crochet also in black
– the final piece was taller than broseph, so close to 7 feet {zomg my crippled hands}
– {additional note} I used roughly 3 or 4 400g skeins of Aran wool in gunmetal grey for the main colour

It wasn’t completed without some war wounds – I developed a twitch in my left eye due to strain which is still to this moment thumping away {going 5 days strong}, and I also mangled my wrist since I had to pull some long hours to meet my deadline, but wrist is fine now. Having said that, it was thoroughly approved by broseph which is all I could ask for. And luckily, it matches his bedroom as well. Misson complete. 

xx A