Accidental Hexagon Blanket

Way back in July 2017 I was ordering some yarn online to make amigurumis, buying a selection of colours from the yarns I favour, Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK and Robin DK. I was looking for any other brands that might work well to crochet toys, and so I also ordered some Scheepjes Colour Crafter to try it out.

When it arrived, it looked very nice, but unfortunately it was much thinner than the brands I normally use. This difference in thickness may not show up when you're making a garment or a blanket, but when you work in the round it's obvious, as you can see in this photo - the shape on the left is made with Sirdar Hayfield Bonus DK, the one on the right is Scheepjes Colour Crafter.

So, I had eleven balls of yarn that I couldn't use to make amigurumi. Luckily, all the colours I had chosen were various shades of green and brown with an autumnal look, so I decided to use them to make a blanket. Given that it was summer when I started doing this, I thought it would be best to make motifs that I could sew together at the end (preferably in the winter) so I wouldn't get too hot working under an ever-growing blanket. It would also give me a project to work on in-between patterns that I was designing - I get quite agitated if I don't have some crochet to work on in an evening watching the TV!

I chose to make hexagons, using a slightly tweaked version of  Attic24's pattern (I made larger bobble stitches in the second round). Having eleven colours wasn't going to work out very well, so I found a ball of green yarn that I'd bought sometime in the past and added that to the selection. I divided the colours into three sets of four to make the hexagons, then after I'd made a few I'd swap the colours round and make a few more, to be sure I used up all the yarn equally.

I worked on these on and off until last spring, when I used up most of the yarn, having made 261 motifs. I blocked them in batches then put them all away over the summer. I've been busy all autumn working on a new book (details to come soon!), but when I finished with that just after Christmas, I realised it was a great time to put all those hexagons together.

Weirdly, I really like sewing things together. I know most people hate it, but I find it rather relaxing. (I worked over all the ends of the different rounds as I was making them, but I wish I'd sewn them in now, as they keep poking out. Oh well, I only made this for myself, so it doesn't matter too much.) I decided to sew the blanket with fifteen hexagons wide, seventeen hexagons long, meaning I had a few motifs left over. It took quite a while deciding the order I was going to sew them, trying to mix up the colours in a random-looking way, but I eventually came up with a system that worked.

Of course, once I'd finished, I realised that I hadn't given any thought to a border! I hunted through my stash and found a couple of green yarns that matched with the other colours I'd used, and did a couple of rounds of dc (UK tr) and one round of sc (UK dc) around the edges, and that seemed to work fairly well.

Rather nicely, this blanket that I ended up making by accident matches well with the decor in my sitting room, so I'm very happy with the end result!