'Happy Face' Blanket

Last year, I spent some time volunteering at 'toogoodtowaste' which is a local charity that does a lot to help the community by decreasing landfills, giving old furniture a chance at a new home as well as providing bedroom packs for those who have literally nothing.  It's also a place where people of all ages and abilities can volunteer.  There's a number of different departments-I volunteered on the Customer Service desk and was able to do a manual handling course and some more first aid training.

The Volunteer Coordinator is a wonderful lady called Jen and she called me a month or so ago about an Open Day they'll be holding on Wednesday 3rd July and she's asked me to go along to chat to people about volunteering.  She also had a special request for me-a dear friend of hers, who has battled cancer in the past,  has had to go into a wheelchair and as she is only in her sixties, she's been finding the transition very tough.  So Jen thought a bright, cheery lap blanket would help and she really wanted a big smiley face on the front.

With a lap blanket, I usually do 25 squares (approx 6 inches across) but here I thought smaller squares would work better.  I worked up a couple of sketches to give Jen a rough idea...

But I ended up going with a Rainbow theme-the squares didn't take long...

(Rascal is a complete nutcase with crochet!  He certainly makes it challenging...)

I played with the layout first-this was the original concept I had for the Rainbow layout-

But how dark was on the lower edge wasn't working for me so I switched it to this-

But I somehow managed to get the red and pink row mixed up so it came out like this-

Rascal isn't very good about not attacking crochet when it's spread out on the floor...

For the Smiley face, I used crochet to make a couple of circles in black, blue and white for the eyes which I stitched on to where the blanket will cover the knees (as requested) and I crocheted over the top for the mouth.  I had to hand stitch the eye lashes which I still think came out looking a bit strange and I added black eyebrows and a nose.  The top half looked a bit bare then so I added six simple flowers in very soft yarn and arranged them in a semi circle over the top.  Are they suggesting hair?  Maybe!  I think it looks better though :-)  I used some left over 'Cupcake' yarn which is super soft and fluffy for the border and made an extra blue flower for the care label.

Are you ready?

Here it is!