Hey friends,
It has been a cold winter here in Northern Ontario. Over the past few months I’ve been away, our family have moved 3.5 hours north of our previous home and for a little bit I didn’t even know where my knitting and crochet supplies or my stash had been put in our storage unit. It has been a whirlwind, let me tell you. We moved our family into a now 500 sq ft hunt camp, off grid. It is a challenge, but we are moving forward, and are starting to build a homestead, from scratch.
One of the things I love about cold winters and lots of snow, is snuggling under a blanket or sweater I’m working on, and watching tv or movies with my husband and kids. This year, that’s even more cozy because we don’t even have room for a couch in our little cabin, so all tv/movie watching happens on our bed. Well, lately my kids have asked me to make them cozy blankets for the long car trips we have to go on, basically always. We live out the sticks. Its about a half hour to the closest town and grocery store, and an hour to the nearest small city, which only has about 50,000 people. This is nothing like the city we used to live outside of (about 850k people), about 3.5 hours away, so its an adjustment for all of us. We love it though. Its so beautiful here.
How to Crochet This Chunky Blanket
When we were looking at yarn at the store, my daughters picked out these ridiculously bright, Bernat blanket yarns. They are super bulky, and work up really quick. One chose a solid Bright pink and the other chose a variegated pink and purple version. So, I had to choose wisely the stitches so both yarns looked their best. For the solid, I chose a fun textured alpine stitch to give the blanket some texture and not take anything away from the yarn. For the variegated yarn, a simple half double crochet worked best and allowed the yarn to be the main feature of that blanket.
Since the girls wanted lap blankets for the car, keeping them small was my best option and not too long. We drive a big truck most of the time, but they wear their winter boots into it so the floors are always wet and snowy. The plan was big enough to cover their laps, and down their legs, or turn sideways if they sit crossed-legged. So about 24″ x 27-30″ is perfect. You should try it with 2 colours or more. This pattern looks so fun, when changing colours at the end of a row.
Check out the graph for alpine stitch, if you like graphs. Or if you’ve never done alpine stitch before we did a post directly explaining it in detail.
Alpine Chunky Crochet Blanket
Size: 24″ x 27″ Lap Blanket
Materials: 7mm crochet hook & 2 balls of Bernat Blanket Yarn (6)
Abbreviations used: dc: double crochet, ch: chain, sc: single crochet. LDC: long double crochet, insert hook into the stitch in the previous double crochet row, yarn over and draw up a loop (keep this loop looser) and finish your dc. You will work LDC into regular dc stitches in the previous row, so alternating each row. (See graph above)
Instructions:
Row 1: 50 fdc or chain 52, dc into 3rd chain from hook, and each stitch across.
Row 2 (and every even row): Chain 1, sc across.
Row 3: Chain 2, *LDC, into the second dc from the foundation row, (skip 1 st on the current row), and dc into the next. * repeat across. Finish with regular dc at the end of the row.
Row 5: Chain 2, dc into next stitch, *LDC into reg dc from row below, skip 1 dc on the current row and dc into the next stitch* repeat across, and end with dc.
Repeat from row 2 until you reach desired length. I stopped about 1.5″ from full length and added a simple dc border to the outside.
Here is the video that goes along with this pattern.
Let me know, below, how this stitch pattern was to do. It is one of my favourites for a solid yarn. What’s your favourite?
Thanks for learning with us!
Much Love,
