CAL – Last dance on the beach #15

February 19, 2017 by Carole 34 Comments

This is the scheduled three-weekly post for the SAL that I’m doing with several other crafty blogs. As I’m struggling to find time to do any cross stitch, plus keep up with all the crochet that I’m doing, I’m going to use these posts for the Last Dance on the beach blankets. That’ll make sure that I finish them, and then I can get back to some stitching.

Last time I finished the squares for the Rain blanket which was a huge milestone. This time I’ve finished the last squares for the Stars blanket! Whoo hoo.

That’s all the squares done for both blankets now. I am so chuffed!

As you can see, once again I decided not to go with the scheduled square and did one of the previous squares. I think this one, the corner to corner square, was probably my favourite to crochet. it’s so easy to do and works up so quickly.

The Stars blanket is definitely going to be colourful. This is all 48 squares, sitting in their piles.

Pretty, yes? So, while I’d got them all out, I got some paper out and labeled each square with its week number to make it easier to lay them out in the right order. The instructions come with a chart for how to do that and it’s very random so I needed to make it as easy as possible.

Once I’d done that, out of curiosity, I laid it all out on the floor. Just to see what it would look like.

And then, I somehow found myself with a crochet hook in hand, doing the zipper stitch to join the squares together. I haven’t finished the joining, but I have done all the vertical joins and two of the horizontal joins. It looks quite good.

It feels about three times larger than it actually is when you’re joining it as all the squares are on your lap at the same time but are all trying to go in different directions. I’ve been using stitch markers to hold the squares together, while doing the vertical joins, to stop them twisting as otherwise they flap about all over the place. The stitch itself is easy peasy, but wrangling the blanket is not. There’s not much more joining to do though so there’s every chance there’ll be a finish for the next update as I only have the border to whack on next.