Pompoms

This granny square blanket is progressing quite nicely now.

About six weeks ago, I finished the main body of the blanket and then crocheted a dc around the edge. But the blanket needed something more, it needed a bigger, bolder, border. Something that wouldn't look out of place on what is essentially a large granny square.

I put the blanket aside for weeks. Mostly I forgot about it. Every now and then I would pull it out and scratch my head and debate how I could finish it.

Yesterday I was ordering some yarn online and came across Scheepjes pompom edging in Royal Blue

and BANG that was just what my blanket needed.

Of course, I don't have any pompom edging and didn't want to wait two weeks for it to arrive. I needed to do it NOW. So I had a quick look on youtube found out how to crochet a pompom edge and away I went.

It's actually pretty easy and looks great too. It is the border that this blanket has been waiting for me to give it.

PERFECT.

It looks great alongside the granny stitch.

Only two sides left to do and then sew in the edges.

On another note, I would like to highly recommend the book, "1914 voices from the battlefields" to anyone with an interest in history, especially WW1. I honestly couldn't put this book down. I didn't lift up the crochet hook for a week because I was so engrossed in this book. It is superbly written, and driven by hundreds of first-hand accounts which are so vivid and personal that they drag you back through time. It is filled with sacrifice and bravery and patriotism - from both sides of the front line. And even though it is told predominantly through the eyes of the British soldier, there are also accounts from German soldiers. What blew me away was the amount of respect and regard both sides held towards each other. Yes, there were atrocities committed, but also many acts of kindness. 

My favourite chapter is the last one, "Chapter 7. A Most Peculiar Christmas". We've all heard about the Christmas Day truce that was held along parts of the front line. How on Christmas Eve, the Germans would sing Christmas songs to the applause of the Brittish and vice versa. How along parts of the front line both sides would come out of the trenches and shake hands, exchange gifts, remove their wounded and bury their dead. How some of these men who had seen their friends die at the hands of their enemy could approach each other with curiosity instead of hate is remarkable. How they could converse and say that they wished the war was over so that they could go home is heartbreaking. 

I closed this book with positive memories and will definitely read it again in the future.

The only thing that I found difficult was all the army terminology, so, for the most part, I just accepted that I didn't understand every technical term and enjoyed meeting the men who fought on the front line in these first few months of the war, through their words and photographs.

Now I'm off to finish my pompoms.

Xx