Making a start on the Persian Tiles crochet blanket

For Christmas I received a rather daunting present from my Mum - a crochet kit to make the Persian Tiles crochet blanket. The kit comes with a pattern, and the yarn and colour substitution chart to make the blanket in the Eastern Jewels colourway. The pattern is designed by Jane Crowfoot and the Eastern Jewels colourway has been created by Lucia Dunn for Stylecraft yarns.

The original colourway is in blues with pops of orange, red, and yellow and it is lovely, but I much prefer the more varied colours of the Eastern Jewels blanket, even if it is a little more daunting to keep track of all the different coloured yarns!

I was a bit nervous when I saw the photograph on the cover. It all looks very complicated with lots of rows, especially on the 16 octagons, and although it's beautiful I couldn't understand how the crosses around the edges of the tiles were made. But my sister added me to a Facebook group for people that are working on the blanket and it was a massive help. I could see photographs of real tiles that people had made and read about problems that people were having to prepare myself in advance.

I decided to start with the squares, as I could see that the first few rounds were just a basic granny square which I'm pretty confident with. To my surprise I found that the pattern was quite easy to follow and I completed my first square quite quickly. It wasn't completely perfect as I didn't get the cross in exactly the correct position, but two squares later I think that I've got it sorted.

This gave me the confidence to have a go at my first octagon. Once again, it wasn't as difficult as I was expecting. There were a few moments when I wasn't sure exactly where to insert a stitch, but I gave it my best shot and I think it looks pretty good. Even better, the sides measure up the same as the squares so it should all fit together nicely!

I was getting in a bit of a muddle with all the different balls of yarn getting tangled all over the place, so I borrowed my Mum's wool winder and made them all into nice little balls which I can squish into a cardboard box and keep them upright and easy to access, it has made starting the second octagon much easier.

Now it's just a case of getting on with it a tile at a time!

If you want to have a go at the blanket yourself, you can buy the kit from various places, mine came from Wool Warehouse. You can purchase the Persian Tiles pattern individually if you want to use yarn from your stash, or you can buy it as a kit with all the yarn that you need. If you want the colour chart for the Eastern Jewels colourway that I'm using then you need to buy it as part of a kit, you can't buy the colour substitution chart separately.