Dum de doooo....

Still waiting for the next letter.

Anyways....

In the mean time I made a baby blanket!  I found some beautiful linen yarn in an Etsy shop called Linen Spirit, in Lithuania.  Alla kindly put together a special listing for me, with the right ply and the right colours and the right quantity that I was after.

As soon as it arrived I was in (linen-yarny-goodness) heaven.  Instead of crocheting the 4ply yarn with a small hook, I decided to crochet two balls together and use my 4mm Susan Bates crochet hook.  I picked a retro-circles crochet pattern and added a couple of extra 'rounds' to make the squares bigger.

I knew before I started that linen shrinks quite a lot when it's first washed, so I made the edge wider and measured the finished blanket before I washed it, just to see how much it was going to shrink.

Before washing: 75 x 90cm.  After washing (and drying in the dryer to make it really-really shrink):  63 x 82(ish)cm.  Wowzers.  More than I was expecting, but very good to know!

The photo above is a close-up of it before it was washed.  It didn't lay flat, every. single. circle. stuck up like a boob.  If it were a woven fabric, I'd call it an open-weave and a little stiff, like a heavy drill.  I was a little worried it was going to stay like that.

But.  Oh, but.  A man at Harald's Fabric Shop in Christchurch once told me that the more you wash linen, the softer it gets.

He was right.

Post-washing:  All of the circles laid flat - without ironing or blocking.  It was no longer an open-weave, all the crocheting was settled and snug with the next loop.  It had such beautiful drape to it, like a soft and heavy fabric.  The green was still a lush vibrant green, the colours didn't bleed or soak into anything else that went through the wash.

I decided that I absolutely love linen yarn and the way it just 'is'.

The peach linen yarn I used on the back of my hoodie is from the same shop, Linen Spirit, and came in the same package.

As soon as it was done, I packaged this 'baby-blanket-made-with-love' up and sent it through to the UK, where it was warmly received not even a week later.

#winning

xx