A Prayer-ish Blanket

Hi everyone!

I've been working on super secret projects recently - terrible for blogging and instagram! But I can share one of them with you today :) 

What do you call the agnostic version of a prayer blanket? 

A friend of mine has recently been diagnosed with cancer. I know that cancer is never expected, but this one has been particularly aggressive and particularly fast-moving in someone too young and healthy. The news hit and I felt what I think everyone around feels in this situation - what on earth can I do? 

Anne sadly has some experience in this area so I asked her - what is the most helpful thing that I could do to make my friend feel supported and loved through the horribleness that is cancer treatment? She said, make him a blanket to keep warm during radiotherapy sessions. It needed to be soft and machine washable. 

I had less than a week before we were going on holidays for two weeks, so with a smoking hook I tore through my Special DK stash for the brightest colours, and used this Ocean Breeze pattern and a 5mm hook for speed and texture! 24 squares made the perfect sized blanket, and it will be useful once he's better as a throw for the couch, or a single bed blanket. Fortunately Allie spent a weekend with her grandmother which gave me some extra assistance-free hours to watch movies and crochet as fast as humanly possible. 

Inspired by fellow Stylecraft Blogstar Polly Plum's Arabella CAL  I used Stylecraft Wondersoft Merrygoround in Rainbow and a continuous sc join in the back loops to put the squares together! It saved so many ends - I can never go back to the old crosshatch style of joining square blankets again! A border in the same Rainbow yarn finished it off beautifully. 

To get the same number of stitches on each side, the "squares" ended up more rectangular which meant that when they came together it wasn't very square! I did decide that the wavy lines were more of a design feature than a flaw though - what do you think? 

My mum, amazing as she is, whipped up a super quick drawstring bag for the blanket to be kept in, for schlepping back and forth to the hospital every day. 

Good luck friend - may you be warm and cured <3