Ta Da Moment

Hello friends

A warm welcome to my new followers, Suzanne from Tales from my craft room, Sarah B from Compostwoman and Rachel Flowers. Hope you enjoy my ramblings.

I have finally finished my comic strip hero blanket. I don't want to sound smug but I feel really proud of this project. It's taken a long time (since August) because I had to do some research on the computer and old Dandy and Beano annuals. Then work out the designs for the squares.  After working out how many stitches and how many rows I was going to do for the squares I could then work out the design on graph paper. 1 square equalled 1 stitch. It worked out when I did stocking stitch but not when I did moss stitch. I crochet round each square in white so that they wouldn't blend when stitched together and to make sure that they were all the same size. Next I placed them in an order where I tried not to get the same two colours together, especially the block ones and then stitched them together. Afterwards I crochet a large boarder around the edge (trebles) only using the colours I'd used for the squares except for the brown, I didn't have enough.  My last round of trebles were completed in black (will understand why further down the page) and the final round was done in treble shells and a slip stitch between each shell. I then made some fringe and attached it to three sides.

I bet you are wondering who the squares represent.
I'll tell you.Going from the top from left to right (top picture).
1 Mini the Minx (Beano)
2 Bully Beef (Dandy)
3 Desperate Dan (Dandy) there are buttons going down the red shirt,
4 Hell Boy (cartoon) there are two crochet circles to represent cut off devil horns,
5 Bash Street Teacher (Beano) there is a tassel on the black square to represent a mortar board, 6 Billy Whizz (Beano)
7 Winker Watson (Dandy)
8 Roger the Dodger (Dandy)
9 Scooby Doo (cartoon) dog collar, my favourite,
10 Spider Man 
11 Dennis the Menace
12 The Riddler from Batman
13 Flash (cartoon I think)
14 Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - Rafael (cartoon)
15 Iron man (cartoon, I think)
16 Cat Woman
and last Gnasher, Dennis's dog, represented by the fringe and I crotched a bone to keep him quiet. Now you know why I didn't put it round the top, too risky hehehehe

I guess you might be wondering what I'm going to do with it now it's finished. Well, M has a nephew who will be 30 soon along with his girlfriend and nephew has a son who will be 11 soon and they're having a joint party at the beginning of November so we thought we would do a joint birthday present. The weather is getting cooler and they like super heroes so why not snuggle down under a nice warm blanket whilst watching them on the TV. I will include a quiz sheet to see if the can find the heroes and at Christmas if they haven't been able to find them all I will give them the answers. I do hope they'll like it. How much did it cost - about £8 for the materials and man hours - too many but I've enjoyed making it.
L wants me to do a Jacqueline Wilson one to represent all her books. That will take quite a while and will be an after Christmas challenge. My next challenge is to knit a twiddle muff for my mum for Christmas, I will post about that when it's completed.

It's been lovely to see you and I hope you will drop by again.

Carolx