A Stash Buster Baby Blanket

I've done a few baby blankets now, but this one is the first one that I have not used a pattern for. It is also the first time that I have combined knitting and crochet together.

It began when I heard through the family grapevine that one of the nieces was trying to have a baby. I thought I could make a blanket for her now, and  it would be ready if and when this baby arrived.

I was thinking that I could order some more wool through Bendigo Woollen Mills, then remembered I had some in my stash that I had purchased many years ago. It was acrylic, not my favourite to work with.

At the time that I purchased the yarn, another lady I know had just had her first daughter and I wanted to make her something small, so I only purchased a few balls of the pink and the white yarn. I stared on a little matinee jacket, but felt the yarn was not suitable for a newborn's skin , and I changed my mind to make a blanket instead. Silly me, of course a blanket was going to take way more time and way more yarn, so back to the shop I went to purchase more. As this stage, the store was only selling whole packets of yarn ( they we going to close down so I found out later), so ended up with ten extra balls of pink and ten extra balls of white. Mmmm......... a lot of yarn, but I knew it would all get used one day.

Needless to say the original purpose of the yarn didn't happen, it ended up a blanket that I gave to a family member when she had her daughter. That blanket can be seen here. Even after completing a blanket, I still had heaps of yarn left, and thought that if I combined the two colours together I could get another blanket for this hoped for baby.

So then I started searching the internet for ideas, and found one that had a border of granny squares .  It got me thinking, and I started making granny squares. Then I had to work out the center, it had to fit, so some maths was involved that didn't really work out so I added in more granny squares to compensate. I pondered over what pattern to put in the center, and decided to use just plain old moss stitch. It would give a texture without distracting from the granny squares, and it wouldn't curl at the edges and make life difficult. Then I added another  border in pink, also in moss stitch.

OK, so the blanket is finished. The original family member that I made it for is still not pregnant ( as far as I know), then when she does conceive, it may even be a boy. So what do I do with this blanket? At the moment it is packed away ready for the first baby girl that comes along. There are at least two babies due within the extended family in 2018, but I have planned other projects for those two. We will see, it may even go to charity yet.