Squaring off

When I posted about finishing the ripple blanket, I promised to show you how I squared off the ends of mine so I could put a straight border around it. That was almost a month ago! Blimey! Anyway, the ends...

As you can see, I filled in the bit between the ripple-y bit and the border with green. Here's how:

I hope that makes sense? Essentially, the increase stitches that you work at the peak of the ripples should have double crochets worked into them (single crochets if you're on t'other side of the pond, or just like US crochet terms). The decrease stitches that you work at the trough of the ripples and one stitch either side of your two decreases should have treble crochets worked into them. The stitches in between are half treble crochets (YO, through the stitch below, YO, pull through all the loops on your hook).

One end of your blanket will have a 'peak' at each corner. This is easy enough, the row should end with 2 dc. The other end will have a 'trough' at each corner. I recommend you work an extra treble into each corner. Certainly, don't count the spacer chain as the first stitch like I did (why? What was I thinking? How did I not notice until I can to photograph it?), or you'll end up with a slightly annoying hole, like this...

Finally, despite the straightening row, I did find that the ripples were still pushing through a little so that I didn't have perfectly straight ends. On a smaller project, I expect this could be blocked out. For this, I added an extra row of DC (SC) which gave it the extra stability and 'straightness' it needed.

As I type this, the snow is pelting down again, so back into the car with the ripple blanket. You know, just in case...