A Labour of Love.....

You know when you have a vision in your head of how something should look? Well that was how I felt about the border for my Jelly Tot blanket. I wanted something that extended the white border on the circles and finished with a lacy flourish! I searched and searched and searched for a suitable pattern. In the end I made up my own for the extended white border and then finished with pattern 113 from Edie Eckman's Crochet Borders book.

The first part hooked up nice and quickly and soon I was ready to begin the lacy edge...

And this is where I stumbled! Not because the pattern was tricky....well there was a tricky bit but I'll get to that later! Row 1 was easy peasy and just needed a little counting and a slight adjustment for the corners. Row 2 however.....well that was a different story!!! Trebles into chains....not chain spaces....but chains!!!! And LOTS of them! Now I'm a fairly tight hooker (hehehe) so you can imagine how fiddly this was. ELEVEN HOURS LATER!!!! Lordy lordy....11 long hours to do a single row! The photo shows the dreaded row 2. I swear I will never ever do a pattern that requires trebling into chains again!

So after the dreaded row 2....row 3 was easy peasy....erm...until I got stuck lol. I usually have a read through the pattern text and then refer to the chart (if there is one)...well I read and read the text and it was as clear as mud! Thankfully I have a lovely hooky friend (and a crochet designer to boot!!!) who made an emergency phone call and talked me through it :-) Panic over and thank you Anita!!! I ignored the instructions, followed the chart and all was well.

TA DAAAAA!!!!!

All finished!

This is easily my favourite crochet project so far!

That border was so worth all of the effort! 

It has been a fairly quick project. I started in early April and finished it on June 20th. I lost count of how many balls of yarn I used and I haven't got a clue about the size....maybe single bed size? All I know is that I'm totally smitten with it actually a teensy bit proud of myself ;-)