…toasty waffles…

The last week or two, there’s definitely been an autumn vibe in the air. I even mentioned to my friends, it feels like fire weather. Not that it’s cold, cool yes, cold no. Certainly not cold enough to justify a fire overnight. But there’s something about those cool evenings and windy days, the hint of the scent of dying leaves, that make me think of fires and fresh bread and soup for dinner. The perfect antidote to “cool but not enough for a fire”, clearly, is to pull out a crochet blanket to work on.

My waffle blanket has been languishing over summer, partly bordered, put aside once the weather heated up too much to even think about being under a blanket. As summer slowly, slowly gave way to autumn, and the solstice rolled around, I started to think once again that a crochet blanket might be exactly what I needed. I also had a resolution to not start anything new during Lent. The first half of March was filled with quilt making and knitting, but as the month wound up, I had a hankering for something closer to a finish. The waffle was the perfect solution.

I had originally intended to add something like 6 “waffles”, or 12 rounds, as the border. Nice and chunky. When I picked it up, I had four and a half round, or two full waffles plus a bit, done. I finished round 5, and started thinking that maybe I had overestimated how big I needed the border to be. Possibly, I thought, I only needed half my original plan. I finished round five, and moved onto round six. The further I moved around the blanket, the more I was convinced this was the final round. I got to the end, I laid it out, and the decision was clear. I was done. Done. DONE.

Of course, like the stable, functional adult I am, I was straight away all up in the group chat, dropping F Bombs all over the place. “I’m finished! See! My finished blanket! A blanket that I finished!”. My gloating doesn’t serve me well, I do confess, but I’ve now finished two of our group blankets. That, for those playing along at home, is two more than the rest of the group combined. One might suggest the gloating isn’t entirely unwarranted.

THE DETAILS

The blanket ended up being a cozy lap size – approximately 41″x56″ (104cmx143cm for us Aussies). I used a 4mm hook, with Stylecraft Special DK yarn (that was either from stash, or that I picked up from lovecrafts*). My chosen colours were citron, saffron, shrimp, blush, clematis, wisteria, cloud, sherbet, aspen & spring.

THE PATTERN

Start with a foundation treble row, in multiples of 3 (I used 80 multiples for my blanket), or alternatively, a foundation chain and first row of trebles. If I was making another blanket, I would do this set up row in a smaller 3mm hook, as the second row creating the texture tends to pull it in a bit. To create the waffle stitch:

Row One: ch 3 (this will be the first tr of the row), *FPTR around next stitch, tr into next two stitches. Repeat from * until two stitches before end. FPTR into next stitch, TR into final stitch.

Row Two: ch 3 (this will be the first tr of the row), *TR, FPTR around next two stitch. Repeat from * until two stitches before end. TR into next stitch, FPTR into final stitch.

Repeat rows one and two in turn until your blanket is the desired length, finishing on row two. I did 11 repeats of my 10 colours, so 110 waffles, or 220 rows, in total.

Border: this one is a bit trickier, as I basically winged it for each round!! I would work the pattern along as far as I could, then use a combo of chains and trebles to turn the corner. Generally it was ch1, tr, ch2, tr, ch1. To work down the side, *FPTR around the “bump” of colour, TR in the first stitch of the coloured row. Repeat from * until the entire side is worked. Across the bottom, I needed to treble into the FPTR of the coloured row, and then BPTR the coloured trebles, to create the matching ridge across the bottom of the row. Because I was working in the round, rather than back and forth, row two was replaced with “tr, bptr, bptr”, rather than “fptr, tr, tr”, to create the weaved look. I completed 6 rounds, or three waffles for my border.