Since I had plenty of yarn for this blanket, forty ounces,
I decided, after swatching, – yes, I was a good girl and I crocheted a swatch!, unusual for me when making a blanket – to make a generous beginning chain of 153 stitches, enough for seventeen pattern repeats or points. Remember, each dainty little point in Marie’s Ripple Mania Eyelet Ripple pattern has just nine stitches! (9 sts per repeat x 17 = 153)
My ‘Iris Garden’ turned out 41 inches wide, almost 2 1/2″ per repeat.
And with ninety-eight rows, it’s about 60 inches long.
Oooooh! Pardon me for bragging a little, but ‘Iris Garden’ is a Bee-uuuuutiful Blanket! The Eyelet Ripple is a very simple pattern that creates a lovely fabric with drape.
Weighing two pounds, I figured ‘Iris Garden’ has 2.72 rows per ounce of yarn (98 rows ÷ 32 oz.), valuable information for those of you who, like me, use lots of partial skeins for crocheting charity blankets. I’m not sure how accurate this is for planning future Eyelet Ripples, however, because the very dark purple is a chenille yarn that I unraveled from a thrift store sweater and far denser than RHSS, my average acrylic.
I’m changing the size of my next Eyelet Ripple, anyway, and so I’ll being figuring out its rows per ounce too. This time I’ll start with a chain of 135, hoping for a thirty-five inch wide kid-sized blanket like I usually make.
It will be the first of the Christmas ripples I’m making with the three skeins of red/green/white variegated yarn from my sister.
Figuring one skein per ripple, there will be three. I just checked – last year I had to get all my Christmas blankets to the charity drop-off by December 12th. I need to finish three ripples by the 12th!? You know me, I’m up to the challenge, but I’d best get a move on!! Vroom – Vroom.
alottastitches 
LOVE the colors!!! Perfect name for this blanket. I love to see your mind clicking to figure out the ounces that you used, and for the future blankets, etc. I always just use the “Ally wing and a prayer” method. Hope like the dickens that I have enough of each color to finish the blanket!!!! Sometimes I make it, and sometimes I don’t!!! ;-)))
Yeah, I can’t shut off that calculating part of my brain. . . it’s always clickin’ away!
I’ve done blankets with a similar ‘design method’. But if I ran out of an important accent color I’d end up adding on to the blanket’s beginning, making the lack of that color on both ends seem intentional. What a bother! Then I wish I’d listened to my ‘clicker’. lol.
What do you do when it turns out that you don’t have enough?
Beautiful is just the beginning of the descriptive words to describe “Iris Garden.” WOW!!! You have a great eye for color. Excited to see your three, yes three, Christmas blankets. I know you will get them completed because of your desire and passion to bless these children! Vroom – Vroom.
Thank you so much! Sometimes I mix colors especially well – I’ve imagined that this blanket would be something special ever since I gathered the skeins of yarn for it!
I’ve already laid out the yarns for all three Christmas blankets. Obviously they’re all going to be red, green and white, but it’s going to be interesting to see how individual they’re going to look just because of slightly different shades and proportions of the three colors. It’s so much fun to play with color! 🙂
Another great ripple! You are right; it is gorgeous. I haven’t done much charity stuff, I haven’t done much crafting at all lately, other than some experimenting with weaving – yikes! a new hobby? perhaps… I did manage a few warm up america squares this morning at least.
Oh, you’re weaving!! What fun! What type of loom are you using? I learned how to weave in college and bought an old rigid heddle one on ebay a couple of years ago, but have only made one scarf on it so far. 😦
Perhaps 2013 will be our year to get into weaving?
Everyone says its even faster than knitting. I suppose if we weave with fabric strips, even faster than crochet!
I dream of weaving blankets, but I’m put off by the idea of weaving strips and then trying to make them look good sewn together. :S
Maybe there’s a way to join the strips more beautifully with crochet?
It looks great! I love the colors. You are the only person I’ve heard of who isn’t breaking a sweat about 3 ripples by December 12!
Thank you, Marie!
I’ve been crocheting one charity blanket a week for a few years now, mostly ripples, so this is only raising the bar a little bit for me. . . to one-and-a-half a week. And remember. . . they’re just little ripples. lol.
Wow, I think I will do this one in the same colors and striping for a little memory for me of my mom….who loved irises.
My mom loved irises too and had several in her garden. 🙂
This ripple would have looked fantastic on the new oh-so-modern Avocado sofa she got in the late 60’s.
Or for my sister….as these are truly her colors.
Unless you fall too deeply in love with it during the making. HAha.
That could be a problem. I can get a bit attached to my projects, so I’ll make sure I have enough for two. And my stash contains most of the yarn already.
Good Idea! 🙂