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.