Sea-Ripple Ahoy!

My sea-ripple blanket has cast its anchor and is happily afloat!

It has taken a long time to complete - over a year. In the meantime there have been fits and starts in the making of it but finally it's left the harbour of my work-basket and its waves now undulate freely across the bed.

I like it very much - it evokes exactly the memories and feel of the sea that I wanted it to, from the pale, feathery colours of the shallows lapping against the shore to the more mysteriously intense depths further out. 

There are some dark bands of indigo and midnight echoing the deep ocean where the sunlight does not fall and the water is almost, but not quite, black. 

And there are some vivid splashes of turquoise and aqua echoing where the opposite is true and the sun turns the water in a shallow lagoon to an azure jewel.

There are memories here of geographically different seas - the greyer, slatier blues of northern waters and the deep royal and turquoise blues of seas further south; evocations of childhood seaside holidays with sand and ice cream and of student trips to the Mediterranean where beaches were interspersed with archaeological sites as well as more recent seaward forays. I like that and never thought it would be such a powerful evoker of the past when I began it. Funny how these things go. 

If you're interested in the technical details, I used Lucy of Attic 24's beautiful Neat Ripple Pattern

and the yarn is the following 23 colours of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino.

Silver 012
Pale blue 202
Pale green 003
Duck egg 026
Teal blue 203
Kingfisher 059
Spearmint 040
Chalk blue 073
Spruce 031
Aqua blue 046
Delphinium 070
Blue 032
Baby blue 204
Mid blue 071
Grey blue 055
Graphite 057
Bluebell 057
Lavender 033
Ultramarine 075
Midnight 008
Ecru 101
Indigo 207
Denim 027

I repeated the run of all the colours three times and then did six stripes of a fourth run as it wasn't quite big enough without. It measures 145 cm wide and 180 cm long - big enough to be a practical bed-covering but not so big as to make it impossible to handle in the wash (I hope!).

I used about two and a half balls of each colour so it's not exactly been a frugal project but fortunately I already had quite a number of the colours in my stash and so I didn't have to buy it all from scratch, all at once. It's always a dilemma as to how much to spend on yarn for a big project like this but in the end I'm glad I didn't spoil the ship for a happ'orth of tar. An awful lot of time and work has gone into it and the feel of the result is as important to me as the look.

I haven't added a border; partly because I am lazy; partly because I think it's OK without and partly because I like the idea that there's something symbolic about the waves not being contained. 

Now that this blanket is out to sea, I ought to feel my blanket-making urge is satisfied but my blanket-making hook is strangely fidgety! We'll see where it goes! 

Wishing you all a ripplingly good weekend!

E x