Crazy for the blue white and red! Apologies to the musical “Hair”

I have been doing quite a bit of crochet recently.  I used to prefer knitting to crochet but now I think I enjoy both of them equally.  This rug is made from wool from my stash.  The blue wool is from a frogged jumper originally made in 1980.  I remember the year because it was the year our second daughter was born.

I saw the pattern for this blanket on the blog Attic 24 The pattern is called Ripple.  Some call the pattern Chevron.  I think the ripples would need to be deeper for it to be called Chevron.

I originally started doing one row of each colour then increasing by a row each time but lost the pattern half way through so it doesn’t maintain the pattern for the complete rug but you don’t notice unless it is pointed out.

The blob of red in the bottom right hand corner is a red flower which is unfinished.  I have to sew in the ends and then attach it to the rug.  I just put in the row of red for a bit of contrast.  I’m not sure if I should put an edge around the rug.  I will live with it for a few days and then make the decision.

For some reason the rug reminds me of Les Miserables. 🙂  I must have musicals on the brain right now.

I didn’t know what frogging was until recently.

Over the years I have unravelled many pieces of knitting but I had no idea that this was called “frogging”  I just thought it was unravelling.  I suppose there are many words for it but “frogging” was new to me. One of the blogs I follow had made mention of frogging some knitting she was doing and I had to check out the definition for myself.

Frogging:

If you make a mistake in your knitting and don’t notice it for several rows, the best course of action for fixing it is to remove the work from the needle and simply rip out the rows you have completed since you made the mistake.

This process is known as frogging because you have to just “rip it” and move on.

It’s not much fun to have to frog your projects, but you’ll be glad you did rather than leaving in a mistake you could have fixed.

Frogging is also the term used when you rip out a whole project and start over, either because you were knitting the wrong size, decided you didn’t like the pattern, or for some other reason.

I have just “frogged” a jumper I knitted many, many years ago.

The jumper was originally for my husband but my daughters ended up wearing the jumper more that he did.  The jumper is now about to have a new lease of life as a blanket.  I have unravelled or frogged it, all but the sleeves to do, and now have several balls of wool which I will wash to eliminate the stitch memory of the wool.

Once the wool is ready for use I will purchase some yellow wool to go with the grey and I am going to make a chevron lap blanket from the old jumper.

The original jumper was made using patterns from a book called “Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys and Arans: Fishermen’s sweater from the British Isles by Gladys Thompson

All of the designs on the sweater are Scottish, mainly from the Kingdom of Fife where I used to live.  Can you see the anchors between the two rows of cable?

Now I need to find a pattern for a chevron blanket.  I haven’t decided whether I will knit or crochet it.