A Spider’s Web – in Progress

I’ve been working fast and furious on Dylan’s Spiderman blanket. The Superhero Dreamcatcher Afghan pattern is very easy and I’m thrilled with how perfectly flat this round ripple is! Just a few more rounds of blue and I’ll be ready to do the next step, adding the web’s black spokes.

I offer a small piece of advice. If you want your blanket to look just like the one in the pattern’s photo, use that photo as your guide instead of doing the color changes as written in the pattern.

We supposedly all learned back in grade school that it’s best to read through all the directions before beginning a project, but I didn’t do it. Because I missed these two sentences, which immediately follow the blanket photo, “Each of these afghans have had different numbers of rounds in red and blue. I do not follow a strict rule of how many rounds of each color, nor how many bands of red or blue to make.”, I was far into the ripple’s second band of blue before I realized the pattern hadn’t included black ‘web’ lines at either of the two places where I changed from red yarn to blue.

I wasn’t about to unravel so much work! At first I thought I’d add black chain-stitch circular web lines when I’m finished. I’ll be adding black spoke lines then anyway. But over time the look grew on me, or I just got lazier, I’m not sure which, so I decided not to put a black single-crochet round at the third change from red to blue either! A mistake repeated is called a ‘design feature’. lol.

Looking through a bunch of the finished project photos in Ravelry not only helped me decide what widths to make the rest of the blanket’s red and blue bands, but also gave me agamerswife’s fantastic pattern for a crocheted spider to decorate the blanket’s red center. I bet little Dylan’s going to love this extra touch!

The other day while I was crocheting on the blanket, going around and around and around, I got thinking about what I needed for the superhero cape I’ll soon be making. I took a break and went up in the attic to hunt for yellow fleece (Batman emblem) and Velcro (cape closure). I only moved a couple of bags and boxes before I found this.

The label’s dated – I bought it in 2009, the last year I crocheted edgings on fleece blankets.

It may be old, but it would still be a shame to cut into such a large piece of fleece just to make a Batman emblem, so I kept looking for my box of fleece scraps, which I eventually found. I have two small pieces in slightly different shades of yellow to pick from.

My freshly organized fleece collection will make it so much easier for me to crochet edgings on many, many fleece blankets in the New Year. A few of these pieces came from tag sales/thrift stores and the rest from JoAnns during her 50 to 60% off sales, with an extra 50% remnant discount. Bargains, bargains everywhere!

I didn’t come across any Velcro up there, but I easily gave up the search once I realized I want black Velcro to put on the black Batman cape and the Velcro I have so safely tucked away somewhere is white. lol. Along with black Velcro, I also needed another skein of RHSS Royal yarn. I ran out just one round short of finishing!

This meant I had to go visit my good friend, JoAnn, yet again, but I was prepared with coupons.