Commission: Jungle Catherine Wheel Blanket

A friend of mine asked me if I could make a blanket for her little boy. He had grown out of his baby blankets, but refused to sleep with anything except the yarn blankets. I had no project at the time, so was happy to oblige :)

Here is the end result:

Catherine wheel jungle themed blanket

Main info:

• Size: 4' x 6'
• Total hours worked: 60
• Yarn: 4 Caron One Pound skeins
• Stitch: Catherine Wheel

This was was my first time making a blanket bigger than baby sized. So I had to do some rough estimates on how much yarn I would need. I knew the size of a baby blanket with one pound of yarn. Three seemed like too small and four too big. But when buying yarn, I feel, it's better to be safe than sorry. So I went for four pounds. I figured I could make the blanket wider than a toddler blanket normally is and then crochet until I ran out of yarn.

The stitch pattern is the Catherine Wheel from Crochet Inspiration by Sasha Kagan.

Catherine Wheel pattern

Lessons and Tips:
Since this was my first big blanket, I definitely figured out and learned a few new things.

First, a pattern with frequent color changes requires a lot of ends to weave in. I know this is obvious, but it felt like it increased by an order of magnitude with this bigger blanket. At times it felt like the ends that need to be weaved in never ended (no pun intended). They definitely took up a solid chunk of crochet time.

Never ending ends

Second, bigger blanket means bulkier to turn. After getting a good section of the blanket made, it started getting difficult to flip over to start the next round. I tried two methods to make this easier.

Using other crochet hooks (an advantage when you have a whole set) I pinned folds of the blanket together.

Crochet hooks used to hold folds of the blanket together

The hooks worked for a while, but kept moving or falling out. So I went for a second method that used some spare string.

Better solution of holding the blanket
folds together with string

Here's how I did it:
1. Pull a loop of the string through the blanket

2. Pull the loop over to the top of the blanket

3. Put the end of the string through the pulled up loop

4. Repeat to the end

5. Since I didn't want to cut my string (never know when I'd want it) I just stuffed the ball of string into the folds of the blanket

Overall I love how this blanket came out and my friend is ecstatic that her little one took to the blanket immediately. It also was great that I finished it in time for the cold weather :)