Northern Zealand Blanket - starting out (Tunisian Full Stitch)

I’ve really looked forward to starting this blanket. I don’t have much experience with Tunisian crochet (check out my one other blanket here), but I love the texture you get with Tunisian crochet – and it really lends itself well to lots of different color combinations, I think will look great. This blanket will be made using the Tunisian full stitch.

(See final blanket and free pattern here)

Of course there is the issue of crochet hooks – especially when crocheting blankets using Tunisian. Then it is crucial to invest in the crochet hooks with long ‘tubes’ attached to them. But luckily that does not have to be a costly affair. I found mine on Ebay for about US$ 6 including shipment (to Denmark). The packet included 12 crochet hooks – 3 mm – 10 mm – all with a 1.2 m tube attached to it. Now this may not sound like it will be big enough for the length of a blanket, but a tube of that length can actually hold quite a few chains, so you can still produce a blanket that is quite large.

I have only ever crocheted one blanket using the ‘standard’ Tunisian crochet stitch – and one headband – but it is my experience, as well as what I have picked up when researching Tunisian crochet, that you should normally go up a size in terms of the crochet hook compared to what you would normally use for the type of yarn you have chosen. In this case, I crocheted a little sample and found out that I got the best texture when I used a 4.5 mm crochet hook – I am using yarn that, according to the label, would require a 4.0 mm hook.

For this blanket I am planning on using a mix of blue, green and brown colors – doing just one row of each color. As you can see from one of the pictures, this leaves me with a lot of loose ends on the right side of the blanket (due to the fact that you never turn the blanket when you crochet it). I haven’t quite decided how I am going to deal with the loose ends, - but I think I will do a bit of research on how best to hide them when the blanket is closer to being finished. If you have any advice on this matter, I would love to hear from you.

If you also want to get started on a blanket using this pattern then I will soon publish a written photo tutorial on how to crochet it.

Find this blanket on my Ravelry profile here.