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Next on my list of ongoing projects is baby blankets for Neighbour To Neighbour in Hamilton. They are putting together layette sets to give to poor new mothers. This is another charity project that my Mom’s sorority is involved with. Again, Mom doesn’t knit or crochet, so she buys me the yarn and I whip up the blankets.

We’ve been using Bernat Baby Co-ordinates, and two strands, using a J/10 – 6mm hook. I like using two strands because it expands the number of colours from which I can choose.

This is my favourite of the bunch:

I like this one because it shows off the colour mixing (and it’s pretty!).

The colours are made by double stranding like so:

purple/purple
purple/pink
pink/pink
pink/peach
peach/peach
peach/yellow
yellow/yellow
yellow/green
green/green
green/blue
blue/blue
blue/purple
purple/purple
and so on

I used white around the outside both for looks and because, for some odd reason, the white of this yarn is a different gauge than the colours. In fact, I’ve found this to be true of the white in several different yarns I’ve used over the years. Has anyone else encountered this?

This is a bad picture of an experiment in direction. I started in the middle with a square, then changed directions and made another square, then changed directions and made a rectangle, and kept going in that way until it seemed big enough:

The purple/pink/peach blanket in this picture was my first one for this cause. I made it in strips, then sewed them together. I *think* the yellow and blue one was the second one I made. It would certainly make sense given the picture:

These are five blankets I made most recently (and by “recently” I mean “before I gave everything up for Christmas crafting”) :

I really love the purple striped on in the front. I couldn’t get a picture of it that really showed off the awesome colours. Trust me, it’s beautiful! The one on the far left was popular with my cousin’s daughter, who asked for a bigger version of it for herself. The blue one next to it I affectionately call the “Ugly Blanket” though I have to admit, the colours grew on me as I was making it. It’s one strand of dark blue and one strand of a two-colour stripe of dark blue and neon green.

This one is a ripple blanket… I find it a bit too long and skinny for my liking:

I’m going to start another blanket once I finish this post… just as soon as I decide what colours to use, that is! I want to get it started tonight so that I can work on it at work tomorrow.

I’m going to leave you with a scrap afghan I made when I found I had a lot of little bits and bites left. This picture doesn’t show the colours quite right, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best looking blanket I’ve ever made:

It is the most random thing I have ever crocheted. I picked two scrap balls at random, then made a square. Repeat. I crocheted a border around each of them with green/yellow because I had a lot of that left. I sewed them together by choosing the squares randomly (this was really hard for me… I’m not a random person!), then I did a round of dc in green/yellow around the edge. Done.

Naturally, my cousin was looking for a baby shower gift and fell in love with this scrap blanket. I couldn’t believe it. ^_^ I hope the baby likes it, wherever he or she is!