I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but has anyone else seen the beautiful bullfinch blankets appearing on the internet?

As I trawled around the internet, in search of a new pattern to have a go at, the Bullfinch Blanket by Scheepjes caught my eye. A CKAL (Crochet or Knit Along) launched last year, it offers the option to knit or crochet a blanket using a specially designed mega-whirl! (photo courtesy of Scheepjes website)

Those who have seen my posts before know that I’m a bit of a sucker for a whirl, having made plenty of things with them before.

I love them so much, I’ve even been caught using them for my own designs, like this Sophie poncho, my Zig Zag Fab shawl and my original Rough Diamonds shawl.

So…..when the opportunity to knit with a whirl that was nearly 3km long came up, I tried really hard to resist, but failed!

The first question was whether to knit or crochet this beauty? (again, not my photo, this one is courtesy of Scheepjes website)

I decided that crochet would be faster, with only half the number of rows per square, and 23 fewer squares to complete.

So off I set on a crochet square…I got halfway through the square, got bored with having to move the stitch marker each row. It is also made up of crochet in back loop, which I find hard to do without looking. How was I going to catch up on all the latest TV whilst I was working on it??

So that got frogged and I went back to the knitting needles.

I started off with the 3.5mm needles as recommended by the pattern, unfortunately the square was way over the 9.5mm recommended gauge confusingly, this square was roughly the right weight suggested by the pattern, at 4g.

What to do….?

I decided that I didn’t like the looseness of the knit fabric, plus the fact it was much larger than the gauge made me think I’d run out of yarn. So I frogged again!

This time I knit the swatch square with 3mm needles. It still weighed 4g (my scales aren’t sensitive enough to give me parts of a gram!) and was closer to the gauge, measuring around 10cm.

I am now two days into the blanket, with only one square to show from it! I have decided that I don’t have the energy to knit another swatch. I am happier with the texture of the fabric and so I am going to carry on with the 3mm needles.

Have you had a bash at this beautiful blanket? Let me know how it went / is going in the comments below!

If you fancy giving it a whirl…..pun intended…you can find the details on the Scheepjes page, or on Ravelry

Wish me luck!