Truly Hooked Circles Blanket

It feels like forever since I last blogged about my Truly Hooked blanket club. It's been almost two years! Whilst creating the blanket, I was so impressed by the vivid colours of the yarn, and how unbelievably soft and squishable it was. I was so excited for each month to bring me new yarny post so that I could add to the blanket I was slowly creating.
I never did receive another pack that quite matched the yellow for brightness - I mean, that pack was practically glow in the dark bright - but the colours continued to be just as rich, and the yarn was just as soft. The gradient continued with a yellow-green, a turquoise, and finally ended with blue, the last of which I forgot to take photos of before I worked them up, which is a shame. I was in such a hurry to complete them I forgot that tiny little detail...



The pattern that I chose for this blanket was the Sunny spread, free from Red heart, with an added crab stitch around the original border. It is a lovely pattern, but had I known then what I know now, I would have chosen a different one. And I would have partnered the colours with a charcoal grey rather than cream. I didn't want to use a pattern that worked in rows, as I was worried that I would run out of yarn before I finished the row or section that I was working on. Now I feel that rows would have shown off the wonderful gradient a lot better. Also, rows wouldn't have been so affected by colour bleeding. *facepalm*
Unfortunately - and as mentioned before - I live with three cats. Although I'm not sure "cats" is an appropriate term for the monstrous creatures that I happen to live with. More like furry little hellbeasts from the ninth dimension. They're evil. Not long after I took the photograph that I am about to post, one of the little assholes decided to pee all over this nice new blanket that was spread over the bed.

And.

It

STUNK!!

Unfortunately for my soft, squishable, gorgeously vivid hand dyed merino rainbow blanket, the only way to get the stink out was to machine wash it. At a high temperature. The washing instructions for such yarns are usually to hand wash, at cool temperatures (and to dry flat, for what it's worth!) The beautiful vivid colours that I loved so much....well....they didn't survive. There was colour bleeding. Lots of colour bleeding. The stark contrast between the bright rainbows and the soft cream? It's gone. The blanket now looks as though a toddler was let loose with finger paints on a dirty grey canvas. Technically? It's still rainbow. And it's definitely still amazingly soft. But it has broken my heart. I was so in love with that blanket, and now it's ruined. And I haven't been able to used hand dyed yarn since. I love it, I keep buying it, and man, do I want to use it. But I'm ruined for hand dyed at the moment...