We have some very good friends who, like us, are big fans of Dr Who.  Each Christmas we exchange Dr Who themed gifts.  I had the great idea to crochet them a Tardis blanket for their Christmas gift last year and in February 2016, duly set about searching the internet for an appropriate pattern.  Who would have thought that there were so many different patterns for Tardis blankets available?  None of the ones I found were to my liking and then I stumbled upon this cross stitch pattern which I thought I could translate into crochet by doing one 2 round granny square per square on the pattern.

I did a quick count and came up with the grand sum of 1544 squares that would need to be made for a completed blanket.  No worries I thought, lets give this a go.  I purchased 2 balls of dark blue and 1 ball each of grey, black, light blue and white.  I thought this would be more than enough to make the blanket.  Unfortunately I grossly underestimated how much yarn I would need so once I had used up one ball, I counted how many squares I had made from it and worked how many more I would need to order to finish the blanket.

Fast forward to mid November and half the blanket is finished (in my defence, dark blue is a boring colour to crochet) so in a mad panic, I worked out I would need to make 20 squares per night to finish it by Christmas eve, not accounting for any time to darn in the (what felt like) millions of ends.  There was a tense moment when I ran out of white and light blue and the order took 9 days to arrive (Christmas shopping) during which time I got started on those pesky ends.  I am pleased to say that I finished with a week to spare and then had a moment of doubt as to whether or not I was going to keep it or give it away.

It made it to the intended recipients on Christmas Day and they loved it every bit as much as I thought they would and more but I won’t be making one for myself.

Details:  I used Stylecraft Special DK available from here in the following colours:

Aster – 5 balls
White – 2 balls
Black – 1 ball
Royal – 11 balls
Grey – 5 balls

Because of the pattern I used it ended up being quite long but the finished blanket would comfortably fit on a single bed