Cable Crochet Baby Afghan in Ivory

I'm just making a short post today to get things rolling. That, and it's midnight and I have to be up at 7am to help get everything ready for a holiday bbq. But hey, who needs sleep?

Anyway.

Several of my major projects right now are baby blankets. One of my friends just had a baby boy, and the other is due pretty much any minute now. Between the two babies, I have four blankets in various stages of completion.

Today's blanket is out of a book I got at Joann's. My friend loves vintage, and when I saw this blanket in the book I knew it was the one. The example in the book is done in off-white, which is perfect for the style of the blanket, and for me, because my friend has decided not to find out the gender of the baby.

My progress so far:

I'm really loving this blanket. The body of the blanket is single crochets, with front post double crochets making the cables. Honestly, I usually hate single crochets, but this blanket goes so fast, even on the wrong-side rows (which are all single crochet), that I hardly notice them.

You can see from the picture (and pardon the background; I really need a proper backdrop for photos) that the base of the blanket is so tight that it has pulled the stitches. That's partly me and partly the pattern, I think. I used the same size hook for the chain and the blanket, instead of going up a size, but I think the pattern just naturally pulls like that. There is a border for this, which should help, and I'll see how much blocking does for it, too. I really hope it smooths everything out because this blanket is perfect otherwise.

Closeups of the pulling at the bottom:

Subsequent cables still pull as I'm making this, but not nearly as badly.

Either way, I'm seriously loving this blanket, and I hope my friend does too! I can't wait to post pictures of the finished blanket.

Crafting ADD.....who, me?

I'm infamous in my circle of friends.

I never finish a project. Well, rarely. But not because I don't want to. I just.....get distracted.

I love to craft. It's all my best friend's fault, really. I met her through the SCA, and after she got me hooked on that, she taught me how to crochet (it was harder than it sounds; I'm a lefty). It sort of took off from there...

First I learned more advanced crochet stitches and techniques. Seriously, the last book I bought was a crochet master class book. Yeah, like that.

Then I learned to sew. I even bought my own sewing machine! My mom thought that was the coolest thing ever, since she sews and crochets, too.

Then I decided I should learn to knit. There are just too many fun things to do with yarn, and I was missing out on half of them.

Now, I'm looking for something more period to do as an SCA thing. So I decided, as a reward to myself for winning Camp NaNo (see www. nanowrimo.org), I was going to buy myself some thread and a tatting shuttle, and I was going to learn shuttle tatting. And while I was at Hobby Lobby, I happened to see a hairpin lace loom, so I bought that, too. And some more yarn. There is no such thing as too much yarn.

Did I mention I still have four baby afghans to finish? No? Well, I do. For babies that are either already born, or about to be. So clearly I needed a new craft. It's a good thing the basic stitch/knot in tatting is fairly simple.

And when you consider that I also like to read, write, play computer games (the kind that take ridiculous amounts of time <cough cough> World of Warcraft <cough cough>), and I have a full-time job....nope, I'm not crazy, not me.

No, seriously. I AM NOT CRAZY. Stop looking at me like that.