The Gift Of Christmas Crochet A Long

I really like a christmas project. In previous years I've made fair isle christmas stockings for my children and my mother. I've made tree decorations and even a crocheted sea sheep. This year I saw the Gift Of Christmas crochet along on social media and loved the look of the blanket with its cheery colourful blocks that looked like christmas presents. The blanket was designed by Made By Anita and the crochet a long was hosted by Black Sheep Wools. I decided to make the blanket and bought the yarn in Blanchardstown Wool Shop. They were stocking kits to make the blanket. They didn't have the recommended yarn and I didn't want to risk paying extra taxes by ordering it from the UK. Their kit was made up of Stylecraft special DK which is a good quality yarn with a huge colour range. The crochet a long started on the 1st of October so there was plenty of time to make it. I chose the retro colourway for my blanket.

The patterns were released weekly with a pdf download and a video from Anita showing exactly how to make each block. This is very helpful if you are a beginner or a more experienced crocheter who wants to be sure everything is in the right place. I printed out the shade card and attached my yarns to it which made it easy to pick out the right colour. Each week the pattern was for a different block, there were granny squares, stripes, bobbles and lacier blocks. Then each block was edged in cream or white which meant that they all ended up with the same stitch count for easy joining. 

It was a lot of fun to make this blanket, the blocks were so cute and it was very satisfying to stack them all up when done. I made the squares for each week and then I edged them in cream before moving on to the next weeks squares. The little bow at the top of each gift is really cute and cleverly done. I hadn’t made a blanket from squares before and wondered if joining it all up would be a lengthy annoying process. I needn’t have worried as because each block had the same stitch count it made it very easy to just crochet them together. I finished the blanket just after Christmas. I got an evening job before christmas so my crochet time was reduced. I’m so pleased with how it turned out, I’ll be able to bring it out every Christmas and put it on my sofa. Here’s some photos of the finished blanket.