A Blanket For My Niece!

 Here it is. My second baby blanket. I made this one last Fall as a baby shower gift for my new niece, Rhiella, who was born last December. I wanted to make something as sweet, unique and special as she is, so I made this blanket out of the softest yarn I could find at Hobby Lobby. I used the Sweet Delight Baby Yarn by Baby Bee in Boo Pink and Chocolate. I originally wanted to use purple and brown (those are the colors my sister-in-law chose for the nursery), but they didn't have that yarn in purple so I chose pink as a good substitute. I used the same general pattern as my last blanket (see previous post) except this time I did stripes. I used one color until there wasn't enough left for a full row and switched to the next color and continued until all the yarn was used. I used 3 skeins of brown and 3 skeins of pink. It was a little tricky figuring out how to join the new color to the next row, but I just winged it. I'm not sure if I actually did it exactly right, but it worked well enough. The hardest part though, was getting the blanket started. This yarn is very soft and fuzzy so the stitches blend into each other, making it hard to see where the next stitch goes and it got knots in it quite easy that I had to cut out because I couldn't see where the knot began and ended, but it was fun to make nonetheless! In fact, I would bring it with me to karate class and work on it while waiting for class to start on the days I had to get there early or while Chad was doing a class that was a little advanced for me at the time. I was a bit disappointed when it was finished but even more excited to give it to my sister-in-law, Rhiannon, at the baby shower. Now my niece has a blanket, all her own, that is as soft and special and she is, which was made especially for her by her Aunt Lisi.

First Baby Blanket

Here it is! My first baby blanket! I crocheted this last Summer/Fall. All I used was a simple single crochet to make it. It's about 110 stitches across. I don't know how many rows. I just kept stitching until there wasn't enough yarn to make a new row. I don't know if you can see the color very well. It's a light, sea green color. I actually started making one a couple years ago but, unfortunately, it got ruined our apartment fire. No way was I going to try and salvage it, along with the unused yarn. For a while I wasn't sure I wanted to redo it, but last year I decided to do it anyway. I wanted to do something very simple and easy, I went with a skein(ball, roll, etc, for those who aren't familiar with the term) of yarn that was not only one color, but also big enough that I could do a baby blanket with just one skein. I'm glad I went ahead and remade it. It was a lot of fun and, in my opinion, rather therapeutic for me in dealing with the fire. My goal has been to get good enough to make and donate baby blankets to local hospitals and this helped me rekindle that desire. Usually, when I make something new, like my first scarf or hat, etc, I don't give away the first one. I keep it for sentimental value. To remind me of how far I've come and that I can do anything if I really want to. So, although I have made a couple exceptions so far, this one I will keep for my own children to enjoy someday. This is only the first of many blankets yet to be made. In fact, I have already made and given away a second blanket, but that is for another post. Stay tuned, I'll be posting about that one real soon.