Rainbow Blanket

I found this amazing rainbow yarn at Spotlight the other day. It was absolutely georgous and I wanted it right away. It was a bit pricey (for me) at $8 for 100g but I figured it was worth it. I like to have a clear idea of what I'm going to make before I head to the craft store, but this was an out of the blue random trip. I grabbed 200g of the wool and excitedly ran home to google a nice pattern. It was a nice fine wool 50% acrylic 50% wool and I don't usually work with stuff like this so i wanted a nice simple pattern. 

I originally wanted a lacey sort of pattern but couldn't find any that I loved ( or they were way to difficult! So I eventually found a shell pattern at Crochetology which was super easy and simple to follow. So i started the pattern. I chained enough to go nearly as wide as a queen sized bed ( first mistake!) I loved the pattern- super easy to just crochet away while watching a movie and after the first 3 rows there was no more stupid counting! 

When I got about 10 rows down i noticed the nice gradient of the wool was turning into very obvious stripes! nooo!!! I did not like it at all! Also the wool was running out fast and at $8 a ball it was going to cost me a lot to finish!!

So I undid it all. I hate undoing my work. If i count wrong or muck up a stitch i usually keep going but i really didn't like how the blanket was turning out. Now this wool was fine- really fine and fiddly. It knotted super easily and was a general pain to work with. 

So i started again but this time i only chained 88 across. And wouldn't you know it it looked amazing! like a beautiful rainbow gradient. But... i was running out of wool really fast. So i undid it for the 2nd time! lucky i was only a few rows in.

So i started again but I modified the pattern. instead of doing 2 dc I did 1. So now the blanket is not as thick but i'm essentially getting twice as many rows as before. It looked so pretty but was a bit on the small side. When I got to a nice length ( or what i thought was half a ball of wool ) I joined the last stitch then chained another 88 and basically worked next to the original rectangle. I joined by doing a slip stitch into the row next to it and then another slip stitch into the next row. It was complicated at first but i eventually got into a rhythm.

When I finished the next rectangle it still wasn't big enough so I joined the last stitch and chained another 88 and made another rectangle.

And that's where im up to now. I've finished all three rectangles and could finish now if i wished but i've decided to add another three rectangles on top of the current three to double the size. This should give me a blanket just slightly smaller than a queen sized bed. Yay! I'm off to the wool shop tomorrow and am hoping they still have 2 balls of the wool left!!

I'll let you know how I get on!