Watercolor Crochet Blanket

The Smidget is almost two months old and I've decided to take my full FMLA, which means I won't be going back to work until Christmas time.

He's just so tiny and so needy that I can't imagine passing him off to a day care worker who has four  little ones to look after. He is taking up the bulk of my time and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So still no cross stitch and there is minimal other crafting. I did get a couple hours to spend in my sewing room, working on water bottle carriers. These are the bottoms of the carriers. I've embroidered them with the recipients Dagorhir names to make it easier to tell them apart, since a lot of these will be identical except for the names.

I've learned to crochet while nursing and my mother-in-law has been feeding my habit by bringing me the last couple of skeins of yarn I need to finish this blanket. I have four rounds on the border and think I can get 3-4 more out of the yarn I have and then I will call it completed! This has been more than a year in the making. I'm very happy with how it looks from a distance. When you're up close the colors don't blend very well but from a few feet away it looks like a water color sunrise.

I really like the border on this one, so much so that I'm considering doing a blanket just with rounds of the border stitch. Its half-double crochet in the horizontal loop of the hdc of the previous row. Its a little hard to describe but here is a link to the pattern: Spring into Summer Blanket. The author does an excellent job of explaining how to stitch this border. I did modify the border slightly: instead of stitching three hdc in the center corner stitch, I did two hdc in each of the three corner stitches, which lets my corners lay flatter.

As a way of keeping things interesting, I've also been putting some time into a couple of scarves using Red Heart Super Saver Stripes.

I picked up an interesting tip in one of my facebook groups. Since I often set projects aside for extended periods of time and also have more projects that I have hooks, I sometimes have trouble remembering which hook size to use. Someone said that they use stitch markers to hold their place and write the hook size on the stitch market. Eureka!

Its a little blurry but you can get the idea. I'd also like to note that I've learned a lot about doing cables with the scarf and that if I could do it over, I'd go up a hook size. The stitching is very tight and it would go a lot smoother and the scarf would have better drape if I was using a 6.0 mm hook instead of 5.0 mm hook. I am however, patently unwilling to frog the whole scarf and restart it. Let's call it a learning experience instead.