Ever since I was expecting my daughter 26 years ago, I’ve enjoyed making baby blankets. Back then I was into knitting as I had absolutely no confidence with a crochet hook. From time to time if a friend or family member was having a baby, out would come the knitting needles to make a blanket. Back in 2017 I made a bright pink knitted cable blanket for my baby niece and my sister in law was so impressed by the blanket that she told me I should make them professionally. This sowed the seeds in my mind that I should have a go at doing this. The only doubt I have is that generally, people are not prepared to pay for high quality hand crafted items and would pay rock-bottom prices.
In 2019, I found a gorgeous little book in The Works full of beautiful baby blankets and planned to try some of them out. They were knitted ones and I made about five of them. That was until I discovered crochet.
Just before the start of Lockdown in 2020, I discovered the Attic24 website and decided to try out a crochet baby blanket using Lucy from Attic24’s Dune Shell pattern. You can read about that on here! Once I’d made that, then I decided I couldn’t be bothered with knitting anymore. I got so many compliments on social media when I shared photos of the blanket that I wanted to carry on. I haven’t knitted anything since!
I got through the pandemic with crochet and have graduated onto the large blankets. But to ring the changes and to keep things interesting, I make baby blankets in between.
So what pattern to choose when you are faced with such a beautiful yarn? I had made a couple of ripple patterned blankets so I didn’t want to make another one. I’ve always thought the Attic24 Cosy Stripe stitch was a lovely pattern for baby blankets and as it had been a couple of years since I had made it, I thought this would be a great choice. Although the pattern is simple enough (two rows of trebles, two rows of granny stitch), it is easy for mistakes to happen with the ends of the rows. On my first couple of attempts at the Cosy Stripe I struggled to keep the ends straight as I gained several stitches due to miscounting!
The Aquamarine Stripe Blanket wasn’t made especially for anyone but I had spotted some pretty yarn in a shop near to where my mum lives in Nottingham. By King Cole, the Cherish range comes in a variety of pretty colours. Some variegated and others single colours. I spotted the Aquamarine colour and decided to buy it. It was a bit on the pricey side- four balls cost me about £18! But I couldn’t resist it and put it in my stash for a few months until I could have the time to work on it.
As with previous Cosy Stripe blankets, I had to frog back a few rows due to my miscounting. To be honest, this happened once when I wasn’t concentrating and I had to unravel about six rows. That was one evening’s work but then again it was my fault. Serves me right!
As the blanket grew, it was clear that I wasn’t going to have enough yarn to complete the blankets using just four balls. I had to order two more just to make sure. Unfortunately the yarn is a bit pricey and I had to go on EBay to order the extra yarn. I buy a lot of yarn in my local Boyes and they sell King Cole Cherish. Typical that they had a sale on and they didn’t have any Aquamarine. So EBay it had to be.
Finally, during the Easter holidays the blanket was finished. I was glad of the extra two balls as I used another whole one in the main blanket and was left with about 20g left of the second. As the colours were so pretty, I didn’t want a fussy border that didn’t show them off to perfection. So I stuck with a plain double crochet border of about 6-7 rounds. I can’t remember now!
The blanket has now been sold and it’s recipient loves it for her new baby grandson. I hope he loves snuggling up under it as much as I did making it.
Love Sam xx
SmartCookieSam 
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