Setting Sail on my Seven Seas Blanket

Yesterday afternoon I opened the front door to find a squishy parcel on my wet doorstep. Seems that my Deramores order was misdelivered to one of my neighbours, and they kindly brought to its rightful home.

I've been so excited about starting this project, even though I know that it will slowly kill me. For those who haven't been following the blog the past few days, here is what I'm planning...

Mother asked for a double-sized Hit the Road Blanket, using colours from her award-winning painting that hangs in our living room.

Each stripe will be separated with a shade of Lilac, as that is the colour of the swimming costume by cousin is wearing in the painting.

The first stripe will be in Royal Blue (James C. Brett Top Value DK), then there will be a dark purple stripe (James C.Brett Top Value DK), after that there will be a stripe of Berry (Patons Wool Blend DK), followed by the Pot Pourri stripe (King Cole Big Value DK). We then move onto the blue shades, which will be: Turquoise (James C. Brett Top Value DK), followed by Ocean (King Cole Big Value DK), and finally we will have a stripe of Kingfisher (King Cole Big Value DK)! Basically, this is what it will look like...

Working from left to right! (starting with the Royal Blue, and ending on Kingfisher)

I had to buy a special 120cm 4mm circular needle from eBay. I could have done with the 150cm, but unfortunately the only 150 I could find was £14, and I wasn't paying that much for one needle. So, I shall have to squeeze all my stitches on the 120cm, it'll be tight but I'm sure I can do it :)

I was poised, and ready to go... I have my pattern, needle, yarn and a packet of wine gums ready in my knitting bag (which I want to decorate with pin buttons, as the fabric isn't one I particularly like).

I was knitting a basic baby hat before the yarn arrived, but I decided to put that to one side as I was dieing to cast this blanket on. Just before the start of the Strictly Come Dancing results, I casted on and started knitting. Casting on took a while as I kept obsessively counting the stitches, finally though I did start knitting.

I'm on row 12 row, making me exactly a 1/5 of the way through the first stripe. I've always been dreadfully slow at 1x1 rib & moss stitch, so each 358 st row is taking me about 20 minutes to knit. I can't wait until I can move onto the stocking stitch part of the blanket, unfortunately though, by my calculations that is 15 hours of knitting time away.

As you can see I'm struggling to keep
all the stitches on the needles!

If this blanket does kill me, and I'm sure it will, I hope you've all enjoyed reading the blog over these past 19 months. And you will all be happy in the knowledge that it was a slow, happy death, right up to the last.