I have two finished UFO’s to show you today from Black Sheep customers. One of which is Betsy’s finished tapestry, you may remember from a previous blog post. Betsy said that she has now taken the finished piece to be framed.

The second UFO is from a customer called Geraldine who sent in a lovely email about her ‘Poorly Blanket’ she started knitting many years ago with her children. Here is Geraldine’s story behind her UFO which you can see from the photograph below is now complete!

Once when my children were younger we spent a wet and windy half term week learning to knit, with four of them it was quite a challenge and I was constantly helping to cast on, picking up dropped stitches and untangling their wool. Using oddments of leftover chunky yarn we made squares that I was going to turn into a blanket.

However, best laid plans and all that, the children are all now in their twenties and the squares? Well you may ask, they were still in a bag awaiting their transformation into the promised blanket. It was these squares that sprang to mind when I read about the Black Sheep UFO challenge, it spurred me on to dig them out of their hiding place in the loft and finally do what I originally intended.

I started by joining together all the squares that the children had made which as you can see formed a very uneven shape baring evidence of the dropped stitches I failed to catch and varied tensions employed by the little people, but all these flaws simply add character.

Having joined all the squares together it was not quite big enough to qualify as a blanket so I knitted the long scarf shaped stripes to go around the sides and finished it off with some cream edging.

I added a second square over the front of one of the squares at the top of the blanket to form a pocket and have put a couple of little characters I have made inside along with a handkerchief. The pocket will serve to keep any future children entertained whilst on the sofa nursing ailments.

To explain, when my children were little we had what was affectionately called a ‘poorly blanket’, if they were ill and cuddled up on the sofa they would be draped with a special blanket. It had to be a particular blanket and in that wonderful way that children believe they really thought it had healing powers!

It is interesting that whilst I was finishing this UFO as my offspring visited they all remembered making the squares and expressed an affectionate interest in acquiring the finished blanket. We have agreed that this newly formed blanket will become our new family poorly blanket.

Thank you to both Betsy and Geraldine for sending in their UFO’s and joining in with the Black Sheep Hook, Knit and Stitch – a – thon. Well done to you both for completing your projects in time!