Saying Goodbye (with yarn)

I’m back!  It’s been awhile since my last post…not for lack of crafty good times, but because I haven’t taken the time to document my progress through the myriad projects on my plate.  I’ve actually been working through a few projects–a goodbye gift for a dear friend who is moving to Texas, a failed blanket repair and the beginnings of a remake, the ever-growing African flower blanket, and a few more hats. Whew!

First, the goodbye blanket. I hosted a party for a friend who is leaving town (for a new job! Yay!) this Saturday and about a week prior to the event decided that I should make him a blanket for a goodbye gift. South-central Texas, believe it or not, is a place that requires winter blankets. This is because Texas houses are generally very poorly insulated and because the houses there are mostly on electric heat (which is expensive)…so for the month of coolish weather in that area, you actually are bundling up while in the house.

Because I didn’t decide to make the blanket until the week before the party, I had to select a pattern that works up quickly. I decided to tackle the Corner to Corner (C2C) blanket that I’ve been seeing pop up on the crochet blogs/forums I follow as it’s nearly all treble-stitches. Warning! If you decide to make this pattern for the first time, you should do the following:

1. Count your damn stitches when you start reducing.
2. Watch a video on how to do the turns. It helps.

The blanket was worked entirely in Patons Classic Wool from my stash (hurrah!) and the colors turned out beautiful (if a little pinker than anticipated). The blanket, however is not a rectangle. Somehow, I missed a number of stitches in the reduction process…and that number of stitches meant that the blanket was 6 rows short. Sadly, there wasn’t time to correct the issue, so I ended up blocking to correct. We should note, I HATE doing this. I feel that it’s lazy.  So my friend got a flawed handmade gift and I hope that he isn’t the type to count stitches when bored during a movie or something.

I plan to tackle this pattern again and mend my no-stitch-counting, error-plagued ways.

Another project was an attempt to repair a baby blanket that I made about 3 years ago. The baby is not a baby any longer, but a very active (and very kick-prone!) toddler.  He loves his blanket, but unfortunately I wasn’t as good about weaving my ends in thoroughly back when I made the blanket. He kicked a hole in it and when looking into repairing the thing I noted that there are a couple other squares that are preparing to come unraveled.

I’m still going to repair the blanket so he’ll have it as a keepsake, but I’m also making him a new one to go on his new, toddler sized bed.  Here’s the beginnings of that project, which is made a bit tighter and has a bit more fancy work.

The final project-in-process that I’ve been busy with is the ever-present African flower blanket. I’ve managed to add another 20 hexes into the blanket. I also have another 20 hexes in the works for this one, which I hope to finish by summer’s end. I think another 40-60 hexes will get the blanket to the appropriate size.

Finally, there are hats!  Oh, so many hats.

I’m back to baby blanketing this week, so hopefully there will be an update on that soon!