Ta-daaaa: My Granny Stripe “Across the Rainbow Bridge”

Yes! Finally finished! My excruciatingly beautiful (if I do say so myself) Granny Stripe! 😀
I named him Across the Rainbow Bridge, a reference to a song by Areon:

Almost a year I crocheted on this. Of course, not continuously, but still, almost a year. I’m soooooo happy a persevered and finished it. And he turned out so so beautiful!

The idea for this granny stripe stared when I wanted to get rid of my big supply of yarn in a bunch of different colours. Apparently this is called a stash busting project.

I wanted a sort of rainbow blanket in which the colours were interspersed with white.
Personally I prefer colours interspersed with white as opposed to full colour blankets. The colours are just as abundant, but it has a less chaotic/heavy feel to it. Plus the white gives the colours just that extra pop.

First I had selected 14 colours from my stash, but the people on Ravelry persuaded me to ad an extra orange shade to get a better rainbow. In the shop I eventually bought 3 extra colours, so now I had 17 different shades that formed a pretty convincing rainbow.

After one repeat of all colours, I calculated I would need 4 repeats to get the desired measurement. Man, what a big miscalculation!
I wanted a blanket to watch TV with. One in which I could cuddle while watching a movie. After some research I found such blankets are generally around 120-130 cm wide and 150-160 long. My plan eventually became 130×160, because bigger is always better, especially to wrap feet in. In the end my blanket is big enough to wrap my feet at least 3 times, because the blanket ended op measuring 138×196 cm 😀
To take the picture below I had to move some furniture!

I did 3 repeats of all colours and a border. I felt this blanket deserved some kind of border, but a simple one, in white to frame the colours. I crochet two rounds of (US) double crochets followed by a round of (US) single crochets and a round of crab stitches.

This was a huge adventure for me. My very first grown up blanket.
At the one end I’m super happy that it’s finished, but on the other hand also sad it’s over. Only one remedy for that: Time to start something new 😉 !

The details:

Yarn: 17 colours and white of different brands. Mostly Wibra and Zeeman acrylics.
Hook: 4,5mm
Starting chain: 203 (201 + 2)
Measurements: 138×196 cm
Number of stripes: 3 repeats of all colours, interspersed with white, plus 2 stripes of white at the beginning and end. In total this counts to 106 stripes or 212 rows!
Quantity of Yarn: Approximately 50g of each colour. 11 and a bit skeins of white.
Time: Started on May 28th 2011. Finished on February 16th 2012. This is 8 months and 19 days!
Cost: Approx. €25
Real prics: PRICELESS!!!