Bertie baby blanket – tah dah!

I am so pleased with this….

It is a good example of why sometimes it is better to buy a pattern and have a guaranteed outcome, than spend ages messing around trying stitches to achieve the effect that you want without necessarily getting there. I had already spent most of a Saturday afternoon trying out wave-like stitches when I realised that the exact pattern that I wanted was available on Ravelry. For £3.00 my problem was solved and within minutes I was well on the way to making an actual blanket rather than just another swatch.

There are two big thank-you’s for this one:
Little Doolally on Ravelry for the Bertie baby blanket pattern: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/bertie-baby-cot-pram-blanket
Little Tin bird for the original colour suggestions from her baby ripple blanket number three: http://www.littletinbird.co.uk/2010/05/08/baby-ripple-number-three/

The yarn was Rico baby classic dk in cream (3 balls) plus one ball each of light blue, light green, light grey, turquoise, ice blue and blue. I cast on 90 +2 stitches, rather than the 80 +2 suggested, and used a 5mm hook. The final blanket is 71 x 54 cm and weighs 225g!
And here is a close up of the lovely stitch pattern:

Ripple blanket

This is a work in progress, but I have been wanting to try ripples for ages and I like the colours so far:

Made in Rico baby classic dk blue, ice blue, turquoise and light grey on a 4.5mm hook. It is not my favourite yarn – 50% polyamide 50% acrylic but some colours feel like cotton and some are soft and wool-like so you get different textures even using one yarn.
I used Lucy from Attic 24’s tutorial on how to ripple (see below) and started off with the colour combination from Little Tin Bird’s baby ripple blanket no.3, and the rest has been plain sailing….

http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/neat-ripple-pattern.html
http://www.littletinbird.co.uk/2010/05/08/baby-ripple-number-three/

Spot on

A bit of nonsense really but the colours appealed to me, and I like the circles into squares idea.

The idea for the circles came from Three Beans in a Pod’s lovely retro blanket
(http://www.threebeansinapod.com/2012/08/retro-circles-tutorial.html)
and the tutorial for turning the circles into squares is on Little Tin Bird’s blog
(http://www.littletinbird.co.uk/free-crochet-tutorials/bullseye-squares-pattern/)

Mine is in Rowan wool cotton dk on a 4mm hook, and the colours are tender, celadon, clear, paper and antique.
Now is it to be a cushion? A stool cover?