A Finished Object!

So I did it! I finished the baby blanket for my co-worker. Good thing too, because on Friday she had some contractions while at work. Two of my other co-workers took her to the hospital. Quite the excitement in our accounting department! It turned out to be a false alarm, but still, it means it won't be too long before we get to see this baby girl. I hope she likes her blanket :}

Here are a few pictures of it. In the first one it is being blocked on a bath towel. Oh, did my cats

love this! I sat there pinning and spraying, pinning and spraying (I decided not to just wet the whole thing in the sink or tub & stuck to just spraying it). They couldn't figure out what they had done wrong, lol!!

This pattern is called "Springtime Patchwork" from the book "Total Baby Knits" by Candi Jensen. This pattern alone caused me to buy the book. I just thought it was so cute and girlie. However, like so many patterns I like the look of, I would never knit this again. While I love how it came out, it is some very mindless knitting! (Although I did make a mistake, can you find it?) As you can see, there are 20 blocks - either stockinette, or a simple knit/purl pattern. Thank goodness for American Idol & Dancing with the Stars. I thought I would go crazy if I had to knit another plan square. For some reason, I didn't really mind the sewing together. Towards the end it got a little tedious, but I guess I was just so glad to be almost done I was happy to do the sewing.

Here are a couple more pictures - one of the blanket after blocking, and a close up of one of the embroidery squares. I had a hard time with the embroidery. I found it hard to embroider on knitting. I almost gave up, but I finally found the groove and I think it came out OK in the end.

The yarn I used is called Fantasy by Dark Horse Yarns. It is a blend of 50% nylon, 50% acrylic, and it is very soft. I think the mix of fibers is good for a baby item, as it can be tossed in the wash. I've noticed that this yarn does have a tendency to split as I knit, but I still really like it for it's softness. It also comes in a TON of colors.





On another note, today we had a beautiful, warm sunny day, and we made a little addition to our


balcony. Hard to believe that only a couple of weeks ago I was taking pictures of snow out there. Today we went out and bought this umbrella and the cushions for our patio chairs. Our balcony faces south, and the sun beats in all day. I figure the least we can do is have some shade to sit out there. Soon we will be adding some flowers, a tomato plant, and maybe some other vegetables. I hear you can grow lots of veggies in pots, and I want to try.

Last year I grew a tomato plant. It went pretty well, with all the sun we get it grew well and got lots of tomatoes. The only thing was, they didn't actually taste that great. They were kind of mealy inside. Not juicy like you would normally think of a home-grown tomato (the kind my dad grew when I was growing up!!).

That's it for now - I've decided to make a few baby booties with the leftover yarn from the blanket - we'll see how that goes. Hopefully she won't have the baby first!