Needles

When I last visited my dear mum in Perth I found her knitting knee blankets for “the old people”.  I guess when you have an OBE (over bloody eighty) ‘old people’ means everyone older than you!

Anyway, I found the method she had for knitting the blankets very interesting.  She had been shown how to do it by a good friend.  The blanket is made of knitted squares and the technique means the squares knit into each other.  This eliminates the need to sew the squares together.  On returning to Adelaide I described the blankets to Jan and she then wanted some instructions.  Mum duly sent them over and Jan started teaching herself the technique.  Then FMIL (favourite mother-in-law – another OBE!) arrived from Sydney for a visit and she also started to knit.

Jan has now completed one 12x12 square knee blanket.  This has got her thinking!  If she were to knit a 36x36 blanket it would look rather nice on our bed in Waiouru.

I’ve placed a matchbox on it to give an idea of the size. I think Jan has been rather clever with the colour of the pattern.  If you look at the squares in columns from left to right they colours alternate in each column and the chevrons in each square all run the same way in each column.  The chevrons also run the opposite way to the adjacent column.  And as I wrote earlier, the squares are knitted together during the process.

We placed the blanket on our bed last night and confirmed the squares will need to be 36x36 to make a bed blanket.