As the weather cools, two of my favorite things come to mind: curling up with a blanket in progress and hosting friends for a cozy meal. This post is a little look at both—my latest scrap blanket and a recent fall-inspired gathering.

I always seem to have a scrap blanket in progress, and the one I’m working on now is my biggest and most ambitious to date. Every winter we use a too-small wool blanket on our bed—even though it’s my largest knitted blanket so far, it’s still not quite big enough.

For this version, I gathered up my whites, grays, and blacks to create stripes, holding one, two, or three strands together to get a heavy worsted weight. The blanket lives in a basket in our family room, and I work on it sporadically, (it's a wonderfully mindless project) but I had to set it aside during the warm months—it’s just too heavy to have on my lap in summer. Now that the weather has cooled, it’s the perfect project to rest across my legs. And since we’ll want it on our bed this winter, I’ve ramped up the knitting.

I’m past the halfway point now and running low on my light shades—and probably the darks, too. I raided my stash and added some light pastels and a few browns, so the last bit of the blanket will have a slightly different look—a mix that tells the story of what I had on hand at the time.

Like every scrap blanket before it, this one will carry its own little history—bits of old projects and yarns from past seasons. I can’t wait to see it finished and finally big enough to cover our entire bed!

Big Scrappy For Our Bed, free pattern

It's blanket weather, so if you need some inspo, here 'ya go!

Kaffe Blanket. This is the blanket I keep in my knitting room, and while I do use it on cooler evenings year-round, it gets the most love during fall and winter. I absolutely adore it. I don’t remember buying the pattern, which is unusual for me since I like to support designers. I think in this case, I simply used the photo for inspiration and tried to recreate it with the Felted Tweed I had on hand, along with a few bright skeins I purchased to complete the look. This is the only scrap blanket where I did not use entirely scraps, but all the rest below, are true scrap blankets.

This is the one we use on our bed in winter but will be replacing it with this newer, bigger one that's in the works now. Honeycomb is a free pattern.

We all have our favorites for the colder evenings watching TV and this is my husband's go-to blanket. Painting Bricks pattern by Stephen West.

After I made my first Painting Bricks with brights, I had enough yarn leftover to make a pastel version  which is my go-to blanket while in the family room. Do check out the projects page on the pattern. There are so many pretty versions.

I made Brass and Steel with the same free pattern and faded some of the more rustic, earthy fingering weight yarns in my collection. This is a beauty but I gave it away to a man who came to our garage sale last week looking for blankets to hand out to the homeless. I had already given my unused bedding to the animal shelter when we fostered our pups last summer, but then thought of this rarely used knitted one. He was so happy to have a hand knitted wool blanket and you can imagine I was thrilled to give it to him.

This is Carter's favorite and might be the prettiest I've made. It's very soft, not too big or heavy, but plenty warm and is easy for Carter to arrange around him. It was fun to make because I faded it and added white mohair to give it an ethereal look. Cozy Watercolor Blanket is a variation of the free diagonal pattern.

Party favors are fun and since we all still have young grandchildren, I'm pretty sure these are passed on.

Shortbread recipe here.