As soon as I saw this pattern by Sandra of Cherry Heart Designs I knew I had to make it! It was originally a CAL however I prefer to make things in my own time so a little while after the CAL had finished almost five years ago I made a start on my blanket.
Nature's Walk is a free pattern available on Ravelry here
Ravelry: Nature's Walk Standard Blanket pattern by Sandra Paul
I know just how much work is involved in putting together a written pattern! This pattern is very comprehensive complete with photos and charts. It's so generous of Sandra to offer the pattern for free making it accessible to all. There is also an option to pay for the bonus edition which gives you 6 extra square patterns to use in your blanket if you wish.
Ravelry: Nature's Walk Blanket Bonus Edition pattern by Sandra Paul
I was really pleased to see this bonus edition available as it meant by buying the pattern I could contribute to Sandra's hard work and for only £5 it has given me lots of joy over the last few years and I can see myself making this blanket again and again in the future.......there's not much you can get for £5 these days!
There are three colourways listed in the pattern and I fell in love with the Wild Hedgerow combo and have followed the colour placement to the letter. Scheepjes Stonewashed is lovely yarn, it's beautiful to work with and I love the mottled effect it has.
Making this blanket has been a bit of a journey! I'd already decided at the start that I didn't want to use the joining method in the pattern as I don't care much for joining methods that produce a ridge, I much prefer a flat join. I know some like the feature of the ridge though, it's just my own personal preference. I'm also really impatient so as soon as I'd made around half the squares I started joining using a continuous join method called tight join, I think it is also called PLT. It's a lovely closed, flat joining method and you can see it in the image above
Just to add I didn't block my squares. The pattern does talk a bit about blocking but, and maybe this is a controversial opinion, the joining process blocks the squares for you so for me blocking isn't needed unless you specifically want to spend the time doing that. You will find that the squares vary a little in size due to the stitch combinations but this sorts itself out during the joining. I'm just not one to block just for the sake of blocking.......life is too short for unnecessary blocking!
I got the blanket about half way joined and most of the squares made and then it got put away in my WIP box for many months, I don't really know why, I just kinda forgot about it! Every so often over the last few years it's come out again and I've joined a few more squares then put it away again!
It came out again a few weeks ago and I have decided that I really want to finish it this year. Five years is long enough! I got all the squares joined and started on the beautiful filet border. The trouble is though is that all this picking up and putting down over the years has affected my tension a little bit and I noticed a bit of the joining in the first row just wasn't as uniform as I wanted it to be. I tried to ignore it, it was only a small part, but I've put a lot of work into this blanket and the yarn isn't cheap........if a job's worth doing then it's worth doing well so I frogged the whole thing back to the squares so I could rejoin them all again!
I was gonna just use the same joining method as before however it is a slow join and so I decided to use a slightly quicker one instead where the join happens every few stitches rather than every stitch. You can find my video for the method I used here
Continuous join as you go with UK DCs
I'm so glad I frogged and rejoined, it was the right thing to do!
The border is almost a project in its own right! You'll know from my previous blog posts that I'm not usually one for fancy borders, I prefer the less is more approach, however I had to make an exception for this one as Sandra's filet border compliments the rest of the blanket perfectly!
This blanket is definitely a keeper!
......and if you are thinking about making this blanket and are in a position to buy the bonus edition I know Sandra will appreciate it, she is a fabulous designer and her written patterns are worth every penny.
Faye x