Lockdown Blanket Is Complete
What a year it has been. There have been yarn shortages, heat waves and wrong colours. Throw in a global pandemic, lockdowns and homeschooling and I think it’s fair to say that the last twelve months have been a bit of a roller coaster. Finally there seems to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The kids have gone back to school and, finally, it is time to say TA DA! My lockdown blanket is complete.
![A giant granny square in rainbow colours](https://rosieandbright.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/IMG_7285-225x300.jpeg)
In March last year I spent some of my birthday money on five Caron cakes to make a blanket for our bedroom. At that point life was still “normal”, although we knew schools would be shutting, and lockdown was likely. Naively I thought that five cakes of yarn would would be enough to a) make a blanket for a double bed and b) keep me busy until lockdown was done. Wrong on both counts.
![five giant balls of yarn in rainbow colours ready for Rosie's lockdown blanket](https://rosieandbright.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/3BAEEAC2-F47F-4631-8FE7-3CCB7A6613B9-300x300.jpg)
When it became obvious that I would need more yarn, I quickly discovered that the colour way I had chosen was pretty much impossible to locate in the UK. In the summer, after weeks of scouring my favourite online yarn shops, I found two cakes in our local hobby craft. Cue: happy dance. Until we got home and discovered that although they were the same colours, they were entirely different shades.
Let’s face it, 2020 was a year that nothing panned out as it should. Why should my lockdown blanket be any different? I decided to plough on and embrace the randomness.
Those two cakes didn’t last long, and the blanket still wasn’t big enough. I started the hunt for more but it was rarer than hen’s teeth. I managed to track down one last cake at the end of October. It was another pale version, but by this time I was just glad to have some in my possession.
Eight yarn cakes in, the blanket was useable but not done. With the yarn out of stock everywhere I had to be patient.
Just after new year I managed to find some, in stock and on offer online. I quickly added four to my basket and felt that 2021 was clearly going to be a better year. Wrong again, Rosie. Two days later the UK was put into full national lockdown for the third time, for at least six weeks. At least now I had yarn.
![four large balls of yarn in rainbow colours](https://rosieandbright.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/IMG_6438-300x297.jpeg)
Last week, exactly fifty one weeks after I started it, I made the final stitch of the border. Twelve cakes of yarn later, my lockdown blanket is complete. Apart from some ends that need darning in. I was planning on getting that done at the weekend so I could do a big TA DA post, but then I went and fractured my wrist. The ends will have to wait, but I couldn’t.
![Rosie's lockdown blanket is complete as she makes the final stitch](https://rosieandbright.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/11D7930D-F2D8-4B40-A8B9-BE57CB65112B-300x300.jpeg)
I can’t tell you how much I love this blanket. The monotony of the granny stitch has been like a therapy for me over the last twelve months. No thought required, my hands have just got on with it while we have watched films or I just wanted to quiet my anxious brain. When I had no yarn, I genuinely missed having it to work on.
Although I loved working on it, I am glad that my lockdown blanket is complete. It is time to move on, to make other things (once my wrist is mended, obviously). Maybe I will leave the ends to darn in once we know lockdown is actually, definitely finished though. Just to make sure.
![](https://rosieandbright.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2F7191A1-8F57-471B-A411-9A7D15B4DA00-300x300.jpeg)