Once upon a time...

Once upon a time a homesick girl took a trip back to the place when she grew up. As she sat on a breakwater by the sea with her bare feet on the pebble beach a sudden flash of woolly inspiration came to her. 'I'll make a crochet blanket in colours that remind me of these South Coast beaches!'

So she set to, researching yarn and tracking down the right colours and matching them up to her large number of pebbles, collected over many years. Then began the process of experimenting with hexagons (she knew from the outset that this was destined to be a hexagon project). Aran weight was firmly decided (she hadn't the patience for DK) and different hook sizes were tried out.

Finally all the variables were decided upon and the hexagon making began. A smart little hexagon counter was added to her blog. 58 hexagons later and she was feeling a little hexagon-weary. In fact she never wanted to see another darn hexagon as long as she lived. The impressive pile of hexagons was laid out on the floor to see what 58 looked like and the tragic little area of blanket it made was all she needed to stash the project away for a year.

The blanket was always in the back of her mind. She really did want to finish this blanket that would remind her of home. So one day she started looking through her blog photo's and she spotted the forlorn little project and vowed to make a start on the 142 hexagons she needed to finish the blanket.

After many hours of searching for the notes relating to the hexagon, and sensibly adding them to her smart Orla Keely notebook for future reference (God forbid this blanket enters phase three on the boredom factor) she made a very large pot of tea and settled down in her favourite basket chair and started making hexagons once more.

As she fashioned the wool into crochet pebbles she remembered the time she was part of a group of friends who went swimming in the sea one summer and how they all used to moan about these pebble beaches because it took time to walk carefully back to your towel whilst shivering until you were blue in the lips. How they all agreed that sandy beaches were far superior. Twenty five years on she thinks what little they knew!