finished: two blankets

On Tuesday, my friend, D., from the Blue Mountains group of the Knitters’ Guild of NSW visited to help me sew some of the donated squares into blankets. We took a while to sort squares into colour groups then to decide on a layout for our first blanket.
We worked together to turn 28 squares into one blanket. D. sews faster than me but still it took us several hours to bring one blanket almost to completion. D. very kindly took all the crocheted squares home with her so my dining table looks a little less cluttered.
During the following days, I sewed the last ten inches of seam and darned in all the ends. I have named our collaborative blanket Scarlet Diamonds – for fairly obvious reasons!

I have also finished my Winmalee Blanket, which is a variation on the Moderne Baby Blanket, from “Mason-Dixon Knitting” by Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner. I needed mine to be much larger so reinvented the pattern for my own needs. What should have been the length of the baby blanket became the width of my single (twin) bed topper and then I recreated the same layout in mirror image.
 
The photo was taken on a dark and dreary rainy day and the colours are wrong. It’s purple not inky black and the border is a lovely bright teal. I think knitting a whole blanket in just 38 days is pretty amazing (well, it is for me anyway)!
I am linking this post up with Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday.
It would have been good if I could have written it last week when I was hosting but it’s really good to approach the end of the month with two finishes, even if only one of them is completely my own work.
And now, with the bushfire emergency over and the need for blankets passed (even though I still have a pile of squares on the dining table), I think it’s time to turn back to my UFOs and WiPs and see if I can end the year in style with 2013: The Year of the Finished Project.