Let's back track a bit. I learned to crochet years ago when I used to work casual, and did a lot of night shifts. Life on 3A was a bit different back then. There were hospitals in the smaller communities surrounding us that had a maternity unit, there weren't as many surgeries. I don't know really what happened but we had a lot of slower night shifts back then. Now not that many years later, our shifts are rarely really slow, but back then I needed something to keep me awake. An LPN taught me how to crochet a single and a double crochet stitch and away I went. I single crocheted a queen sized blanket for my dad for christmas. It took months. It was not especially pretty, I never learned how to count stitches, or ensure my gauge was accurate, or consistent. So it is huge. It is ridiculously warm. He loves it. It took me months to complete, and I promptly stopped crocheted for almost a year. Then the next christmas I made a smaller double crochet blanket for my brother. I tend to overdose myself on things, and then avoid them for a long long time. Crochet is no exception. I have made a couple blankets here and there over the years, never for myself. So I decided to make myself one to match the colours that I want in my room. I started by thinking up an awesome granny square design that utelized 3 different sizes of granny's. I made up a ton of the one size, made 2 of the small size, put them all in a bag, and tossed them behind my chair. Not to be looked at again for 2 years, when I had to dig it out to get my hooks for my new baby blanket project. So here we went again. I always had made huge blankets that took ages, but this was a baby blanket. Small, quick, painless right? Wrong.
I found the cutest pattern on Moogly called the Blackberry Salad Striped Baby Blanket. Its adorable. And luckily it had a video tutorial, because I do NOT know how to read a pattern. So I figured out how to work the stitch and set out to make the blanket.
Clearly I did not pay close enough attention to the pattern. I got this far in my new project before I said ENOUGH and tossed it behind the chair and ignored its very existence. I had managed to chose a stitch that would take as long to do a baby blanket as a queen sized blanket would take in a different stitch. What can I say? I clearly don't like to do things that are simple... uh right.
It wasn't until 2.5 months AFTER my nephew was born that I decided it was time that I get started on his blanket again. My friend had told me a couple months before that she was expecting baby no. 2 and asked when a good time to put her baby blanket order in. I laughed and said that my sister's wasn't even remotely done yet and my nephew was already born. So I pulled out the bag from behind my chair and looked at the blanket. Not excited, let's just be clear about that. I hunted down the pattern online again, watched the video to remind myself how to do the blanket and discovered that I did the blanket wrong. The bobble stitch should be every 4th stitch, with 3 single crochets in the middle, then after the bobble stitch row, a double crochet row. I was doing every other stitch a bobble, and then did a single crochet row following. AKA, I made it MORE difficult and time consuming then it actually should be. But the blanket was started, and I'd put way too much time into it, so I decided to continue. It took me 2.5 lifetimes hours to complete the next row of blue that is NOT in the picture. Then I turned it over to look at it and discovered that I had screwed up... at the beginning of the row. Aka almost 3 hours of work was useless. I then promptly gave up. I tossed the started blanket in the bag and grabbed the yarn and went to work on the RIGHT pattern. I don't know why it was so difficult but starting the blanket out with the right amount of chains was almost impossible. It took me over 30 attempts. I almost gave up completely but thankfully I got it right. And away we went.
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| The flash messed up the actual colours, the brown is DARK |
Once I got the chains right the blanket was fairly steady going. I finished it in a couple weeks. I had planned on only making it a square but my sister wanted it to be a crib blanket, so I made it bigger. It is a fairly heavy yarn, and a thick stitch so it is a nice warm blanket... I almost want one for myself, but I know how well making myself a blanket goes.
I had decided there would be no more blackberry striped blanket action for me. I was done. I told my friend that she should find a blanket online and send it to me so I could get an idea of what she wanted. She found an adorable rose blanket that looked impossible and required a purchase of a pattern, which I have already established I wouldn't be able to read. So we agreed I would make the same style of blanket. Yippee.
And may I say that getting the correct chains to start was every bit as difficult this time around as it was the first. I don't know what is wrong with me, but clearly I should stick to blankets that don't require counting.
I used a thinner softer yarn for this blanket as my friend lives in Arizona so my sisters blanket would probably give my friend's baby heat stroke. I had 4 blankets to make in total. 2 down 2 to go. I made this one second, despite this particular friend being due in January and my other friend being due in November. If all had gone as planned it would have been fine. I finished this blanket quite quickly, but Miss November bumped up the schedule by delivering 5 weeks early. So now I have to quickly decide what I am making, and get it made. Good luck to me.
