Blanket of Many Colors and Yarns

In May, I started turning my sock yarn left overs into something useful.
I picked a pattern from Drops and began to crochet small sqares from all the little balls of sockyarn, which have accumulated over the years. I made squares in blue, in green, red, orange, grey, brown, pink, yellow and any combination thereof. When a ball got too small for a full square, I combined it with others to make multicolored patches (up to five colors sometimes).

After getting 512 patches together (long since I had run out of my own scrapes and asked for and received donations from friends), I started to crochet them all together, using some off-white sock yarn I had in my stash. I had four skeins, but this was not enough, I needed a fifth one, which luckily was found in a friends yarn basket.
I didn't follow any particular order, only made sure that not two identical colors ended up next to each other.
I still need to wash the blanket and lightly block it. I hope that stops the curling on the edges.

Technical info:
material - sockyarn, about 2 kg I think
Regia 4ply, Regia hand-dyed, Regia Cotton, Colinette Jitterbug, Wollmeise 100%, Opal Hand-Painted, Gründle, Noro Sock Yarn, Lana Grossa Meilenweit, Schoppelwolle Admiral, Zitron Trekking Hand Art, Schoppel Zauberball, Mark & Kattens Fame Trend, Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic, ....

Crochet hook - 2.5 mm and 3 mm

Pattern - Crochet DROPS blanket in ”Delight” and ”Fabel” for the squares, the rest I sort made up as I went

Size - about 200 x 220 cm

Final thoughts - I just can't quite express how much I love this blanket. Colors I never thought would go together are happily next to each other and the whole thing is just amazing.

Baby Surprise Jacket

I don't know why I don't knit more baby stuff. There are only advantages.

A) you don't need much yarn. You can pick a ball or two (or three) and for a little bit of money you get enough material for a complete project. Not like a jacket for myself which is really quite a bit of an investment.
The yarn below I scored at I Knit in London. At this time I didn't know if it would be a boy or girl, so I went with something fairly neutral.


B) Knitting something for a baby is usually a very quick knit. The Baby Surprise Jacket (aka BSJ) by Elizabeth Zimmerman is a hugely popular pattern for it's fast and fun (and really a bit surprising - that woman was a genius). There are more than 16000 projects for this pattern on Ravelry as of today. It took me one weekend to finish. It's still missing buttons, though.

C) Finished projects are super cute and one has the sudden urge to find a random baby to put the jacket on.

And there lies the problem (that's why I don't to more of that stuff). I have a certain lack of babies around me. And I don't see how this will change in the near future.
Ah well, back to knitting stuff for myself. How much yarn do I need for this .....?

Three Guesses

... on where I've been. 'London'?
Damn, you're good.
I took a quick trip to visit a friend, do some sightseeing and watch a couple of shows.
On the first day I've rode the London Eye and got a great view on Parlament and Big Ben.I then walked down to the Tower Bridge.On the second day I then visited the Queen.I also went to see two shows: 'We Will Rock You' and 'War Horse'.

I saw 'We Will Rock You' a couple of years ago in Köln and enjoyed it a lot. It's one of those musicals with an abandonce of energy that will have you dancing in the aisles at the end. Loved it.

'War Horse', on the other hand, is a bit more serious. It's based on a children's book by Michael Morpurgo, showing the horrors of World War I through a horse's point of view. The play was excellent and I was blown away by the puppetry (or 'horse choreography' as they called it) which was used to bring the horses to life. The play has won quite a few awards, and rightly so.