I did finally manage to pluck up the courage to finish taking all of he tape off of the pegs from out pit check board in th hall. All of the chicks are now back on and the display is looking all pretty again. I won't be in the bad books any longer. I managed to get it finished in the time that I got home a little bit early from work on Friday before my husband got back.
This now means that I can start to order my squares and even to sew them together as well. Yey! This is the part where things should all start to come together and some of my inner OCD and geeky-ness comes out. Please bear with me!
I decided that I wanted the squares to look random but also to follow some kind of a pattern. So I went with a random order of the 16 coloured squares that I had made 11 of and then a white and beige in between each set of colours. I used a random number generator to produce 11 lists of the 16 random numbers.
I had the squares laid out on the floor in a pattern so that I could identify the number of the square in the formation and therefore follow the order that had got from the random number generator that I used.
And then to start laying out the squares in the pattern dictated by the random number generator. I went with 1-16 for that colourful squares.
Then an alternate arrangement of the white and beige squares.
And it grew...
Backwards and forwards until all of the squares wee used up.
This was the first draft. This was the totally random version of my new blanket but I decided that perhaps I couldn't quite cope with pure randomness. I started to work through and remove some the duplicated squares - where the same colour has managed to end up next to each other.
I again used my random number generator this time taking the number of the square in the sequence that I wanted to change and then taking a random number from 1-16 to switch this with. I would only switch within the same sequence so as to keep the frequency of arch colour even.
And finally I completely rearranged the final set of colours. I noticed in the bottom right hand comer that there seemed to be far too many dark colours. This became most evident when I viewed the pattern in black and white.
I decided to completely rearrange the final block of colours. This includes the bottom 2 rows in the right hand corner as well as the whole of the bottom row. And the final article looks something a bit like this...
Yey! I did notice since I took this photo there are 2 light aqua coloured squares in the 3rd column from the left that are still next to each other. I did spot this and do one final switch before starting to connect the whole lot together but I never took another photo after this point, sorry. You will just have to wait until the final article to see the full effect.
And so to start attaching them together...I am using the method that Lucy from Attic 24 describes for connecting the squares. I am using some yellow yarn as this is one of the colours that I have an extra ball of and lots left of. If you remember from my last post about the blanket I had this and the pink colour that I had received an extra ball of each.
The first few went together nicely and using the crochet method to attach the squares means that it also doesn't take too long per row/square to attach them.
I soon had 2 rows together
And to start on the 3rd...
There were a couple of things that I needed to keep an eye on. With this 3rd row I had to be careful not to have a twist in the first when I attached it otherwise this could not be untwisted or corrected. Once I got past this row though this is no longer an issue.
I also had to be careful not to make the stitching too tight with this connecting of the squares as it could make the squares bunch up a little. This would mean that once the squares are connected in the other direction I could end up with humps in the middle of each square where these are all baggy and the edges are tightly connected.
I worked through a number of rows this Sunday as my husband day of being on call, which would usually involve answering a couple at 5-10 minute phone calls, turned into pretty much a full day of working from home.
I built up one row at a time eventually ending up with this. The picture is a rotation by 90degrees of the final design so I basically have connected about half of the squares from the left hand side of the origianal plan.
I am currently working from right to left of the above picture (bottom to top of the design pictures). I did miss having my relaxing weekend and seeing my husband during that time however I am really quite chuffed with how far I got with this in a couple of days.
I was generally kept company by Henlow who we now have just roaming around most of the downstairs. We had to give up with shutting him in his house during the day really as he will just keep climbing out now he has figured out how.
This seems to be his new favourite place, hidden behind the door in the living room. He started hiding there with our Xbox guitars that we kept there originally.
We have since moved these upstairs and out of the way but it's still definitely his favourite place to hide.
I would have thought that if he wanted to go to bed then he might find his way back home to his comfy and toasty house but hey ho. I'm sure that it's weirdly comfy behind there. We do have to put him to bed in the evening still as we don't really want him staying in the living room when we're not around but he seems ok with that too really. Often when we pick him up to put him to bed he is so fast asleep he's all tucked into his shell and his eyes are totally shut. Soo sweet.
I love my little man soo much. He makes me so happy and I love having him around much more now too, even if he does like to hide often really. It is much less difficult now that we have got a plastic box at the weekend and hidden all of the wires from behind the TV so he can curl up I there and we have to worry about him eating the wires. We don't have to leap up from the sofa quite so often to stop him going there now.
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