FO: Baby W's Booties

And the matching booties are done too!

Poor kid isn't going to be able to wear these for a while (while Ravelry said they were newborn size, only if your newborn has ginormous feet) but they're cute.

Pattern can be found here (Ravelry link)

These killed the blueberry yarn from the blanket.  I guess somehow there was significantly less yarn in that skein?  I have maybe 1 foot left of it, not even enough to ball up for the cat.



These weren't too bad to make once I got it figured out.  The really tricksy bit was joining the tops (purple) with the bottoms (blue).  It really shouldn't have been as hard as it was, but the instructions weren't making sense in my head.  Theres a chance this is going to be the default bootie pattern for everyone, it's pretty easy to knock out over the course of the afternoon.  This is what I did while we were snowed in with the blizzard week before last.

The Baby Blanket that would not end (but did finally!)

It's finally done.  Finally.  Well, it's been done for a month now, but it's done and I have time to write about it.

Baby W's Circle Blanket.

overview of the entire blanket

These were all taken after I had washed it and blocked it out slightly (stretching it out on the living room floor counts right?)  Total measurement is 36 inches across, 113 inches around, 1017.9 square inches.

Close up of center

Total yarn use: Most of 1 skein each of Caron Simply Soft's blueberry, limelight, and grape.  I finished the blueberry skein making the matching booties.  There's probably enough of the limelight and grape to make another pair of booties, but I don't think I'm going to do so.

cat provided for scale.  If that's not particularly helpful, 36 inches

Overall, this pattern wasn't awful, except for the start.  The start, as I may have said before, was just infuriating.  3 hours to cast on is kind of ridiculous.  Accurately placing the stitch markers is really important for this one, as are tip protectors for when you have to put it down.  The biggest issue I ended up having was getting needles that the blanket would fit on as it grew.  I already had a 40 inch needle, but the 60 inch took over a month to arrive (and, apparently, the shop I purchased it from lost the notification that I had come to pick it up, as they called me last week to let me know it was in) which really slowed the whole process down.

The final edging I kinda just fudged.  It would have worked better if I had actually done the math and realized that 550 isn't divisible by 3 and 3x3 ribbing wasn't going to work very well.  But the end result ended up looking kinda cool and who's really going actually look at the ribbing when there's a pretty baby wrapped up in it?  Making it divisible by 3 would have involved another 6 rows and I was already in tears because I just wanted to be DONE with it.  (Knitting at 2 am because you promised yourself you'd finish it tonight?  Might not be the best idea ever)

When I make another one of these, I think I'm going to stick with 1 color and do different stitch patterns for each section.  Also, I will know better than to set arbitrary deadlines for it.