Rainbow ZigZag Blanket - FO

It's finished.

After a marathon session of edging, culminating in a row of crab stitch, which I've never really done before except for a few stitches to see how it's worked, DD2's Rainbow ZigZag blanket is finished off.  The ends are all sewn in and it's on her bed.

For the edging, I did a round of trebles in cream, working two stitches per ripple row.  I saw on another blog (possibly Crochet With Raymond) how the edge stitches had been worked in two-stitch clusters and though they looked neat, so did the same.  After that, I went with three rounds of coloured trebles with a round of cream dcs separating each colour.  I finished off with a round of cream dcs and then a round of cream crab stitch.

This is the blanket folded into eight, on the sofa, which gives an idea of the size.

Here it is on DD2's bed (complete with her own, special wall 'art' - I'll redecorate once she's stopped drawing on her walls).  Her bed's a junior size and the blanket's tucked down at the foot board, so I think it should still be a good size for a full size single bed.  That's something that we need to buy, but as she threw a bit of a hissy fit when I tried to move this bed to a different position in her room and a bigger bed won't fit in that space, it's something I'm putting off for as long as possible.  It's an autism thing - change is Not Good quite a lot of the time.

And finally, a close-up of the ripple pattern.  I think the colours have come out ok in this shot - I really need to think about getting a better camera as it does struggle a bit sometimes with multi-coloured things.

This means that on the needles/hook I have the Claudia laceweight crochet scarf that I've, erm, more or less forgotten about, if I'm honest.  Now that hubby's going to have to go into his office in London four or even five days a week, I'll be able to get on with my St Brigid sweater (it required concentration, which I can't do when hubby's working at home).  I also have some vanilla socks on the go (the yellow stripey ones) which are good for TV knitting.  I started the cuff on the first one this morning at knitting group (they're toe-up, so nearly half way there).

So, what's next?

Actually, it's going to be this:

I wound the yarn when I got back from knitting group this morning (and Jess has learned the hard way to keep her nose away from my swift - oops!  She was warned to keep away, I promise).  The pattern is Rock Island by Jared Flood (Ravelry link) and the yarn's Angel 2ply/laceweight by the Natural Dye Studio.  According to the label, the colour's 'spice' and isn't quite as orange as the photo suggests.  The pattern gives a finished dimension of 68" wingspan and 31" depth on 4mm needles, so I might go down to 3.75mm.  Not sure if wood or metal tips would be the best option for this - metal might be a bit slippy and having read some of the comments about this pattern on Ravelry, it requires concentration, so having stitches that don't stay put on the needles might be a bit risky.  The shawl starts at the bottom, with the border knitted sideways (something lik 72 repeats) and then lots and lots of stitches are picked up along one edge of the border and the spider webby pattern is started.  At least with a bottom up shawl the long, long rows of knitting are done first, so you don't get that 'am I ever going to finish this?' feeling!