Working on Baby's Blanket

Thought I would add a new sequence of posts to my blog: baby blanket progress!

Let me just give you a little intro and background info about me and crocheting :)

Yes, crocheting. I don’t know how to knit. My mom taught me how to crochet, at about 13 years old. My mom is a big fan of crocheting! Actually, the first year we moved to Upstate New York, Jordanville, she held a crocheting class for the girls at Russian school. At that time, most of the Russian school kids were a lot older so it worked out nicely. Once a week we would get together in our living room and my mom would teach about 5-6 girls how to crochet. We then used our crocheting skills to make little neat things like Christmas tree ornaments (balls and snowflakes) and would sell them to people in our church during Christmas time to raise a little money for our school. It was very nice.

But anyway, back to the point. I am not a professional, ha. I only know so much about crocheting so my abilities are limited :) I know how to do a double stitch (I think that’s what it is called :)) and have an idea on how to do a hat. Most of the things my mom taught me were little things, like the Christmas tree ornaments, whose designs she would make up on her own. And also, occasional border designs she came up with for blankets.

So, I can’t read those patterns in that crochet language or whatever it’s called. That is like Chinese to me. Just because the way I was taught is my mom would show me- I would repeat and I would learn. And most of the patterns and designs my mom kind of made up as she went with it, which kind of gave me perspective to do the same. It’s kind of like cooking I guess. You start out and just add a little bit of this, take out a little bit of that and see how it comes out... It’s hard to explain I guess. Which kind of explains what I mean by I have “an idea” of how to do a hat.

About a year ago I made my first baby blanket and baby hat, with the same yarn I am actually using to make our little one’s blanket. I worked for this family back in the city, in Staten Island… a 3 year old girl and the mother was expecting a boy. A random thought came to mind, and I had a random inspiration to crochet at the time, to make a blanket. It came out very nice, I wish I had a picture of it, but basically how I made that one is how I am planning to replicate the one I am making now. I also made the baby a hat, which didn’t take long, and I think was easy because his head was very small so I didn’t have to be too concerned about how many stitches to make less or more when making the round shape.

Another thing I wanted to mention is the yarn I picked out. I posted a picture of it today on facebook sharing also the fact that I could not find this yarn originally, and had already started the blanket yesterday and was very upset at first. But then I got lucky and found the very last one!

Anyway, the story behind the yarn is… well firstly I wanted to get something cotton for baby. A lot of the yarns are either acrylic or polyester and I don’t know… I wanted something cotton. Also, my mom used the same exact yarn as this for a blanket she made for my sister Sasha way back when, except it was a dark pink, light pink, white combination. It turned out very pretty, and I liked the feel of it. So, when I was picking out yarn a year ago for the baby I made it for, and I saw this yarn it just sparked up old memories and I wanted to use it for the blanket. And I just really like it.

But yes, that is just some info about me and crocheting and the yarn. I really am not that good at it and wish I was more educated within the crocheting realm of knowledge, haha… but I want to make something for baby from myself, from scratch. A silly thought… but when my mom made my sister Sasha her blanket, and then later made one for all of my other siblings, I was very jealous, even at the age of 15 -16 I remember being jealous that she made one for all of them and didn’t make one for me. I know, silly… but I don’t know… I just want to make one for our baby. And hopefully make something special for all our God willing future babies as well. It would be cool, and hopefully when they grow up they will appreciate it and will be touched that their mama made them a blanket with love in every stitch :)

But back to the original point of this post… I started working on the blanket yesterday and got a little bit done. So here are some photos to share.

Don't mind me in my pj's and taylor swift shirt :)

An up close view of the blanket so far.

I originally started it measuring it to be the width, but I think I am little off and the blanket will come out too big and will take me forever if I base it off the width, I think this size will do good for the  length.  We’ll see I’ll officially decide once it grows more. I am not doing any special design on it. Just a simple blanket, I plan to make it with a simple, pretty, nice white border of the same type of yarn.  I’ll put up a post every now and then showing the blanket’s progress leading to the finishing product. Hopefully it won’t take me too long. After all, I have about only 19 weeks left… right? :)