This spring has been quite busy in terms of babies. They’ve been popping left, right and centre. For two of them i decided to make a blanket as a present.

Well i started with one, the second frantically followed a bit later, though i was late with both in the end…

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Blankets are cool, who doesn’t like a good blanket… we sure do, we have five on the sofa alone. Well, Chris has, he loves his blankets. For that reason i thought i would crochet a blanket for him as a Christmas present last year.

I thought i’d kill two birds with one stone and use up my odd bits and ends and not actually buy any new yarn for it. I completely failed at that as i just simply didn’t fathom the amount of yarn required for a decent blanket. Being restricted by colour scheme obviously didn’t help, but still, crochet eats yarn like there’s no tomorrow. Anyway, this story is not about that blanket, that’s still not finished, i will still need to buy more yarn, so maybe i could potentially finish it for this Christmas. Then again, it’s locked in my work drawer and i haven’t been there for over two months…

Chris’ blanket started as one granny square that kept growing and growing. Once i was happy with the width, i continued working only on the opposite ends to move away from the square shape and achieve a rectangular blanket. From this i learnt that a granny square blanket should consist of multiple squares. First, there’s a lot more instant gratification in finishing each square, also, much more design options.

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Casually scrolling Instagram, as i do it way too often,  i have come across a few granny square baby blankets and finally i got a reason to make one. As baby’s gender was not going to be revealed up until it’s too late to start the blanket,  i went for colours that would work well with whoever popped out.

Luckily i had a plane trip planned during the making period and that’s where i did the most damage. I made more than half of all the squares on the plane home and back and at the airport. If i hadn’t had that trip it would’ve taken me a lot longer to finish that blanket.

 the squares is the least of your worries – easy peasy. Then comes the end weaving. Oh god all mighty, that’s minimum of 2 ends per square and maximum of 4 if you have two coloured square. If you have 42 plain squares and 56 coloured, plus 30 triangles, that’s like million ends to weave in. I was going mad while doing that – my back went, my neck went and i stabbed myself with the bluntest needle more times than i can count.

But even that is not the end of it… After that, you’re left with 100+ individual pieces that somehow should make up a blanket. Up until i was already a third in, the thought of how i’d be connecting the squares, never entered my brain. So, when it did, i was, well, concerned. Never have i ever had to join crochet pieces where the seam wasn’t hidden. I grabbed a few squares and started experimenting straight away and luckily i came up with quite an interesting and neatly decorative seam, i was happy, i could proceed.

When all the squares and triangles were attached i finished it off with a nice decorative border. Overall i was chuffed, though every now and then i doubted myself on the colours i had chosen and countless times during the make i was worried the blanket is too small, but only because i kept comparing it to our grownup blankets.

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When i finished the first blanket, i said to myself and probably to everyone online, that i’m not touching another granny’s square in quite some time…

Took me less than a month to start a top using granny squares…

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But then another blanket idea popped into my mind. Initially it was just an idea of a baby blanket with no design. I sort of didn’t want to make the same one again, though i did have quite a lot of yarn left so the idea was to use it all up and only buy a bit that i’d need.

I started it the same evening. I redid it that same evening like five times. I just have this stupidly annoying characteristic of not thinking things through before i crack on. Eventually, few days later, i undid everything yet again as i ended up going for a completely new colour scheme and new yarns. Yay for yarn deliveries.

The second blanket had quite a tight time-frame, the baby was due very soon and the blanket would need to travel all the way to Latvia during the bloody pandemic lock-down, so i found a design that consisted partially of granny squares, though bigger granny squares and partially of simple back and forth panels that would take a bit quicker to make.

I had so many hiccups on this project and all because i was rushing ahead of myself the whole time, so undoing and redoing was a frequent occurrence. Not having a pattern or clear idea of how the finished object should look like meant that i kept running into problems a lot and had to deal with them somehow right there and then.

For attaching all the pieces i used a similar but less visible joining stitch. It’s basically just the slip stitch that’s connecting one leg of the border stitch of each part. Border on this blanket didn’t work as well as on the other one, but it definitely needed one as it was super wonky otherwise.

Overall i am happy with the outcome despite the multiple mistakes i then later found while putting it all together. The look reminds me of my lawn with the dandelions, so if i was any good at giving names to my creations, i’d call it something in association with that.

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If there are any other babies due, that need a blanket, i need the whole nine month head’s up … Just saying…

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i-a