For Baby Boy Soto

I taught myself a new stitch pattern out of one of the books I got for my birthday, and made this solid blue baby blanket for my coworker's sister, who will soon have a baby boy. I used the same color to single crochet border around the edge twice.

Dragon #2 (actually number one, but two in blog posting order)

So... finding dragon-print fabric has proved to be harder than expected, so I'm "giving up and giving in" and going to the art store this afternoon to pick up some linoleum blocks and fabric-safe printing ink to get a bunch of these squares done quicker than cross-stitch will allow (I also did some math this morning, and discovered that I was going to need 24 blocks, so... at least half of them will end up printed rather than stitched). My Sunday mornings stitching at Sol won't get this project done until the (currently not-yet-born) baby is a toddler if I stitch them all, so it'll be a mix of printing and stitching. WILL STILL BE NEAT.

The Burninator

Part of a larger project- blocks with cross-stitched dragons will be put together into a baby-sized quilt. This is the second one I've finished (no picture yet for the first), and they are both missing eyes because I don't know how to do French knots yet. But I can go back and put them in later!

Baby Blanket Trio

For my last birthday, I got a couple books of new crochet patterns. I was already planning to make a baby blanket or two (I know a couple folks who are expecting), so this was a good chance to try out some new patterns on smaller blankets. The two blankets on the sides of the picture use the same pattern, with rows of double crochets alternating with rows of shells and v-stitches. The one in the middle has split shells and regular double crochets alternating in a pattern to make vertical rows. The blue on the right has alternating, equally thick stripes of a medium baby blue yarn and a mixed light baby blue and white yarn, with a single crochet border of the lighter blue. The purple is solid in a lavender (that I had around- I had a smaller skein of this color, as well as some leftover from the basketweave afghan in my previous post), with horizontal stripes of a darker purple, and bordered once around with the lavender again. The green on on the left has a stripe of a medium baby green at either end, with a stripe of white just inside green, and the body between them is a shiny light green. This one will have a single crochet border, once around, in the white, but it wasn't quite ready yet when I took the picture.

Large Lavender Afghan

This blanket turned out SO MUCH larger than I had planned. What was supposed to be a quick project became a several-months-long commitment. The trouble is, with the basketweave stitch, you do lose some of the width once you start the pattern, it gets scrunched up with the front- and back- post stitches; unfortunately, you don't lose quite as much as I anticipated. I don't know why I thought it would be so much, I've done this pattern before... but the blanket ended up huge. By the time I realized just how enormous I had set the width at, it was long past time to pull out stitches and adjust. I had already spent some serious time working on it, and had to just commit to the size.

I did the basketweave pattern for quite a while, and then I got tired of it, and had to do something else, so I added in a five row stripe of single crochet. I added another one later, separating the basketweave pattern into three equal sections. Ultimately, I like the way that turned out looking.

What I don't like, is that the blanket ended up being just not-quite square. I generally aim to make blankets that are rectangular (or actually square, because they are composed of squares), and I think it would have been nice for a large afghan to be distinctly longer one way... but I was already three one-pound skeins of baby yarn in, and I really really did not want to do another. And it's still warm and cozy and soft.

"Uglydoll"

My friend is having a little nephew in a couple months, and asked me to make an Uglydoll-style stuffed animal for him. I'm not about straight plagiarism, so I did some google-ing, and then built on their product, using the fabrics that I had. This toy got swirly eyes, and a navy blue backside. I used some felt I had for the eye pupils and the mouth. And I finished off all the poly-fill stuffing I had left!

Harvest Hexagons

A year or two ago, I made a hexagon blanket out of some yellow wool yarn that my grandmother had given me (and given me a lot of). I gave the blanket to my sister, as she had a friend with a baby that was only wearing/using natural fibers. Apparently that baby loved the blanket, and the couple now has a second baby, who also loves their older sibling's blanket. My sister asked me if I'd be willing to work on a second blanket, for the second baby. She said she wasn't sure if Baby 2 was more attracted to the wool or the hexagons (or perhaps just Baby 1's possessions), so I decided to pick up some more wool, and revisit the hexagons.

Baby 1's blanket was yellow, but for Baby 2 I got to pick the colors, and chose to go with a leaf green and cream. I organized these hexagons in stripes, and this blanket is more rectangular than the first (if I remember right, the first ended up shaped like a large hexagon). I used some of the leftover green to go around the edge once in a single crochet border. I'm still not totally satisfied that I can't get these hexagons to lay flat, but that's something to keep working on.