Crochet a baby blanket.

I ended up not adding the scalloped border, because I’m not all that sure of my ability to make it work, and honestly the whole thing looked pretty without adding more. It’s the four-color rainbow blanket, and I added two rows of shimmery white in single-stitch around all four sides (gods was THAT a pain in the ass, since I did double-stitch for the rainbow stripes and had to find places to anchor the single-stitch down each side) for a contrast, and it really brought out the colors and made the whole thing more vibrant.

I know it’s not totally even (some of the rows waver a bit), and to anyone who actually crochets regularly it’s probably pretty amateurish. But the point is, it’s made with caring. I’m taking pics of it tomorrow to post, and then it’s in the mail, and actually BEFORE the kid is born, no less. Damn, I’m impressed with myself.

So I’d basically given up on it. But then, another friend of mine is having a baby next month, and I decided to make them a blanket. Within a few days of that, Becky was complaining to me that Emma’s baby blanket had gotten lost somehow (dropped out of the baby bag in a store, nobody had found it) so I’m back on for finishing the blanket.

The blanket I’m making for Emily (my friend Robbie’s daughter) is a totally different style than Emma’s patchwork squares. On my mom’s suggestion, I’m using four colors and going in stripes, but I’m doing three rows of one color, using two strands, then two rows with one strand of the first color and one strand of the second color, then three rows of the second color, and so on, so that it fades nicely from one to the other. I’m going blue to green to yellow to pink back to blue, and the only transition that isn’t smooth and fade-looking is the pink-to-blue. But it still doesn’t look bad at all, and I’m about two thirds of the way done with it. Wish me luck!

So I’ve stalled on my progress, dammit. Cross-country move takes a lot of your time and attention, doesn’t it? Only four more 20×10 squares to crochet, then putting them together and border around the whole thing, and I haven’t worked on it in two weeks. Damn, damn, damn, damn. Must work on it tonight. I’ll stick Metalocalypse on and crochet while I watch.

Well, I’ve got three more squares done, for a total of six. They’re looking pretty good. Two of them seem to be slightly bigger than the rest, but only a little. Probably a tension issue; not enough to make a serious issue of. Certainly not enough to justify undoing/redoing those two. Not when each square takes me almost an hour (yeah, what can I say, I’m slow).

But I’m starting to be beset by the doubts that always plague my well-intentioned projects. This is a baby blanket for my friend Becky’s new baby. But I can’t help but wonder if it’s a good idea to do this. She’s got lots of friends and family. I bet someone else, someone closer to her than I am, will be doing something similar. What happens, then, when she gets multiple baby blankets for the kid? I’d hate to give something that ended up being useless.

I always have this conversation with myself when I’m trying to make something FOR someone. Ugh. Well, I guess even if my nerve fails me and I end up not giving it to Becky, I can donate it to a preemie ward or something and they can give it to some kid there. There are always people in the world who DON’T have someone to make their kid a blanket, right?

I’ve got three squares crocheted now; twenty stitches by ten double-stitch rows. Makes for very even squares. And I’m proud, they don’t waver in and out – well, a tiny bit, but only if you look close. For someone who’s not crocheted in ten years, that’s pretty damn good. Since the skein was starting to get loose, I undid it and rolled it into a ball. I’ve got probably one, maybe two more squares off of that skein, then it’s on to the next one. Maybe hoping for Friday was a bit optimistic? We’ll see how this evening goes while I’m watching my shows.

Originally I was going to knit a blanket for my friend Becky’s baby, she’s having her C-section next week. I bought the yarn and all, and this was to be my first big knitting project. But I couldn’t get the tension right with the finer yarn and different-sized needles, and got frustrated. Then my mom re-taught me how to crochet, and it’s going much faster. I’m making it as a patchwork, so I’m crocheting a bunch of squares in different colors and will put them together at the end. I’ve already finished one and a half squares, and that’s after experimenting with about four different patterns of crocheting and un-doing it each time to do something else.

I’ll finish the second square, then I’m going to bed. But I’ll do more tomorrow; I’d like, if possible, to have it all done by Friday so I can mail it on Saturday so it’ll be there in time. Hells, it looks like I may actually FINISH a project for once.