A gift for the furballs

Today I bring you a pet blanket:

I initially made this for my dog, but for some reason or other it ended up on the couch under my cats instead. They seem to like it.

My main reason for making it wasn't any great desire to give my pets something to lie on. I had just bought a whole bunch of yarn for an afghan project and then decided almost instantly that I hated said yarn and would hate to crochet a whole afghan out of it. It was my desire to use up the yarn that inspired me to make this.

Here's an extreme closeup:



Don't mind the occasional hair that's visible in the pic. I didn't clean the blanket before snapping the pics. This is actually the clean side.

I used no pattern to make this. I just made a chain until I liked the length, and then crocheted on it until I liked the width. I wasn't sure which stitch I wanted to use, so I used all three. I just did a row of single crochet, a row of half double crochet, and a row of double crochet and then repeated. I like the effect.

Because I was making this thing in an effort to use up yarn I hated I decided to crochet with two strands of yarn in order to maximize the yarn usage. It worked pretty well and I ended up with a nice, thick, cushy blanket, in spite of the scratchiness of the original yarn.



The edging is some reddish fun fur that I had lying around that actually amazingly matches the yarn. I like it. Though the yarn the actual blanket is made from is washable, the edging is not. Guess how I found this out?

Yep. When I did finally get around to washing the blanket the edging felted together. I really don't care. It still looks ok (though much different), and even if it didn't it's just a blanket for my cats to shed on anyway. No harm done.

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Let's get down to business!

Wow. This must be what, my third "starting" post in a row in this blog so far? I'm doing this for reals this time, though.


I thought I'd start by showing you some of my early work. Behold, my very first swatch, which I still have because I'm an overly sentimental sop and I don't throw things away like I should:



I like to think it looks a little bit like a crochet map of California. Of course, it's supposed to be perfectly rectangular, but you can't have everything.

You can see how at the top (technically the bottom, but I don't display it that way) I made my foundation chain way too tight and then the whole thing bunched up when I started doing the actual crocheting in the following rows. I don't remember what it was like to make this thing, but I must have had to fight like hell to get my hook through the loops of that chain.



This is my parakeet, Pickles (aka The Buzzard, aka You Green Little Snot, aka You Noisy Bastard, aka Crapfactory, aka Little Terrorist, aka @!!!**!), cheekily refusing to pose with my swatch. When I don't want him near my crochet I can't get him out of it.

He makes it very difficult to get any work done because he likes to be with me, but he also likes to try to eat anything I happen to have in my hands, be it a crochet hook, a pen, or a (computer) mouse.

My very first "real" project was a blanket. Personally, I do not recommend making a blanket your first real crochet project. It's so big! It's probably better to go with something smaller, but still rectangular, like a scarf. That's what most people start with. But no. I did a blanket.

Not even a blanket made up of a bunch of little squares sewn together either. A great big blanket all in one pattern.

I started with a test swatch to make sure I had the stitch down:



Here's the actual blanket, all freaking 100 rows of it:


This thing took over two years to make. I couldn't tell you exactly how long. Part of it is that a blanket of that size is unpleasant to work on during the Summer, especially around here where it gets into the hundred-teens and we don't use our air conditioner much because of the power bills.

Factor in that I had to put it up when we got a puppy until she was old enough to know better than to try to eat the thing while I was working on it, and then do the same when we got kittens, and that adds on a big chunk of time.

Also, I have a terrible tendency to absolutely hate any craft project by the time I get to the end of it. Usually I end up giving it up. Crafts that are dead to me now because of this tendency of mine include (but are not limited to) sewing, embroidery, and latch hook. I just take so long to finish that I either hate it or lose interest before I get done. I have no idea how my interest in crochet managed to survive the thing that killed so many other crafts for me, but it did.

Now that it's all done, we keep it draped over the top of the couch when it's not in use. This is a good place for the cats to lie on it and dig at it with their claws. A nice way to treat your first project that you spent over two years on, no?

I'll close with a close up so you can see the stitches:


Not hugely complicated for a beginner. This stitch might make a nice scarf. It's all double crochet, which is nice. 2 dc, skip 2, 5 dc in 1 stitch, skip 2, repeat.

I did all the work on this blanket through the back loop, mainly because I was too inexperienced to know I was supposed to be going through both until I was pretty much committed to what I had been doing. I think the effect was nice, though.

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