Baby Blanket

A long-time friend of mine had a baby girl this summer and it was the perfect reason to finish up this baby blanket I had on the go. 

If you're interested in crochet, I recommend you get this book or one like it. "63 Easy-to-Crochet Pattern Stitches" published by Leisure Arts. The book does give you the instructions on how to make the afghan pictured on the cover, but I like that it gives you the "general rule" (e.g. multiple of 3 +1) for each square so that you could make a larger piece if you wanted. 

The yarn I purchased was six different colours (including the white) of Bernat baby yarn and I made seven squares in each of five different colours, choosing 35 different patterns. For this blanket, I chose just to do the "back-and-forth" patterns and I didn't make any squares where you work from the centre out in rounds. It's easier to adjust sizes on the back-and-forth kind of squares. You can see in the picture that I've just got to add the white edging to the yellow squares and they'll be ready to sew together.  

Then I had to decide if I wanted to put them together in a regular pattern or more random. Usually I'm one to be very linear and structured, so I decided to "push the envelope" and go random. Except it wasn't really as I did have one square of each colour in a row and tried to make sure it wasn't too match-y to a row near it.

Sew the squares into rows and sew the rows together. It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but the last step is to crochet two more rounds around the entire edge of the blanket to finish it all off. The pattern actually has a fancier edge but I just chose the plain single crochet stitch. I figured that with all the colours and all the different patterns (and the yarn has a bit of shine to it too), that it could just get to be too much.

What I really like about a project like this is that you can do one or two squares in an evening, so you actually feel like you're accomplishing something. I have made a blanket that you did the entire width at once, and it feels like you do a lot of work with not much progress!

~Lisa

Baby Cards

I get to welcome a lot of new babies in the next few months. And two very special new nephews will be arriving soon!

If you are keeping count (and I know you are!), I will soon be the lucky Auntie to 7 boys!

 Believe it....7!

So I got working on a few baby cards.

This cute sail boat seems suited to a little boy. Super easy to change the colours to suit a girl or make it in yellow or green for the baby who's gender is yet to be revealed.  

I saw this little man card somewhere on Pinterest and thought it was just adorable! I have also seen something similar with a pink tutu skirt and necklace instead of a vest and tie. I love this one!

This one with the clothes on the line was meant to be. I have had the cloud paper tucked away for ages and the mini clothes pins were leftover from another project. Cute cute cute!

These baby cards took me a few hours to create, spread over a couple of evenings. 

What a nice way to welcome a new baby!

~Jessica