Jake's Stripy Blanket

So here, as promised, is the big reveal of Jake's Stripy Blanket, though a little later than I intended - somehow taking care of a 6 month old who suddenly decides he is not going to nap anymore can be time consuming! But normal service has resumed, little man is sleeping and I have time to write a post.
I started my blanket for two reasons - firstly, my friend Rach gave little J a gorgeous pram blanket when he was born, and it got so many compliments from my friends that I knew I wanted to make a bigger one for J when the little blanket became too small. Then one of my new mum friends asked if I could show her how to make one for her little boy. Of course, I agreed. I have a basic knowledge of crochet and knew I would be able to teach my friend who was a complete beginner, but I needed to make sure I understood how the blanket was constructed myself first. So, the perfect excuse to start my own!

I took a quick trip to my local yarn shop to pick up some acrylic in some nice bright shades. I went for two shades of Hayfield Bonus and two shades of Stylecraft Special - very economical and great for baby knits as they are easy to wash. I decided on a range of blues with a splash of yellow thrown in for contrast.
I followed the instructions for the Granny Stripe blanket on the Attic24 blog - this is an extremely popular pattern for a reason, once you get going, it is so simple and very 'moreish' if that is an appropriate term for a yarn project? You know what I mean anyway!

The blanket was so easy to pick up and put down to just add another stripe when I could, perfect for fitting in around little J's nap times. I decided to crochet until I ran out of yarn, but then typically I ran out of a colour in the middle of a stripe. So another trip to the LYS was in order, and I picked up another couple of balls so I could also add a border, which I hadn't originally intended to do. However, my tension had been a bit iffy over the course of the project and I thought the border might disguise that a bit. I am so glad I did! It makes the blanket, and really did sort out the slightly wonky edges. I just added a round of granny stripe all around the edge and a row of treble crochet, simple but effective I think.

I would love to make another one of these and probably will do in the future. My friend who I taught to crochet is already on her second! I love this - spreading the yarn love. But in the meantime, I had some of the extra balls of yarn leftover, so I decided to create a little blanket buddy to go with J's blanket. More on that another day...

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