I wish I could claim credit for this amazing blanket pattern, but unfortunately I cannot. I found this pattern on the back of my yarn label several weeks ago. I was instantly in love with it. The pattern is called "Bobbles And More Bobbles Afghan" and I found it on the I Love This Yarn medium weight yarn at Hobby Lobby (I have not been able to find it online and for that I greatly apologize). The picture for the pattern showed a peacock blue and deep tangerine, but I knew I wanted to use it for a baby blanket in boy colors. There are currently two lovely ladies at work who are pregnant, but too early along to know the sex. I already have two blankets for girls ready and waiting (since my little monster is a girl, I have way too many pinks, yellows and purples laying around and was looking for some stash busting blankets to whip up), but then I started thinking "What if one of them has a boy? What if they BOTH have boys? What if I don't have enough time to get blankets done once I find out?!?!" My mind was racing and I didn't know what to do. So I had taken to pinterest to find a pattern I liked that was simple enough that I could work on it while watching my little monster play. Several days later, I realized I wasn't getting anywhere and I was also not working on my own new patterns! Curse you pinterest!!! It wasn't until I got my white I Love This Yarn out for a small accent piece that I noticed the free pattern it had. The blanket was gorgeous and suddenly I was inspired! I ran out the next morning to Hobby Lobby and picked out the mint green and baby blue right away. I got the first 9 or 10 rows done that day and didn't want to stop! I brought the blanket with me to work and stitched on my breaks and lunch for two weeks straight. I was like a mad-woman trying to finish as quickly as possible!
As I was following the first few rows of the pattern, I noticed that something wasn't quite right. My blanket didn't match up with the blanket on the picture. I kept going over it several times. I even looked at the Hobby Lobby website to see if there was a place you could write in to tell them they have an error somewhere in their patterns! Lucky for me I gave up trying before I found it, as I did eventually figure out what was wrong: On the pattern, they list Color A, Color B, and Color C. They have you start with Color A. What they don't specify is that Color A is not the most prominent color for the pattern. So as I was working the first part of the blanket, my stripes of color were coming out small and the white was bigger (the opposite of how the picture shows it working). Once I had gotten the hang of how the pattern went (it was alternating one row of bobbles and one row of single stitch while changing colors every three rows) I wasn't reading the pattern row by row and was alternating colors based off of how the picture on the front looked. When I went back to the pattern, I found out what was wrong.I had finished the bobbles and was ready for the solid rows of single and double crochet stitches, but I had my white yarn ready to go - my "A" color. It wasn't until I saw the pattern said to use "B" for this section that I realized my error had started waaaaaay back with my first chain stitch. I let out a heavy sigh and decided I didn't care. I had already gotten through nearly 30 rows of "this doesn't look like the picture, but oh well" to go back and take it all out and start over. Plus, its not like it looked bad in the least! If anything, I liked how it was turning out better, since the color blocks in the middle of the pattern were much larger with just a couple rows of white in between. I liked the contrast it would make. I gave up on following the pattern to a T and used it more as just a guideline.
After working on the blanket for a couple weeks, I stopped midway and worked on my first amigurumi! For those of you who don't know (and don't feel bad, I was one of you up until last month), amigurumi is simply "a crocheted stuffed toy". My little monster has a Duckie that she snuggles with for naps and bedtime. If she doesn't have Duckie, there will be a baby meltdown, complete with sobbing and REAL tears. It's a whole big thing. We have no idea where my husband's parent's friends from another state got Duckie and can't find another one! So I was thinking, maybe if I make her a new toy and she watches me make it, that other stuffed animal can be just as special and maybe used as a replacement if Duckie is being washed or (heaven forbid) left behind somewhere again. I found the cutest free pattern for a baby dragon amigurumi from pinterest and left my baby blanket on the back burner. Baby girl LOVES Dragon now, but my plan sort of backfired. Instead of Dragon being a substitute for Duckie, we now have to bring TWO stuffed toys with us everywhere or a baby panic will happen. Sigh. We have also recently figured out that they have names, but not just how you'd think. Duckie is "Duckie" and Dragon is "Dago" and that's all well and good. She understands that and knows the difference between the two if you ask her for one or the other. She has decided, however, that the two stuffed toys collectively are named "Na-Nai" and should never be separated. Ever. "Monster" is a good nickname for my little bean.
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| Little baby monster in her Blackhawks jersey with Na-Nai |
The last thing I did wrong was to not pay attention to the finished size listed on the pattern. I suppose that may have actually been the very first thing I did wrong. For some reason, when it said 42" x "51" I imagined that being much smaller and baby blanket-y. When I had the last big color block finished, I held up the blanket to show my husband how it looked and told him it was just over half done. His eyes got big and he asked me "Didn't you say that was a baby blanket? That's gonna be HUGE!" I realized he was right. The dimensions were 36" x 30" as it was, and looked like a decent size to snuggle a baby in already. I know there are bigger baby blankets out there that work just fine, but to us, the smaller size just looked right how it was. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I decided the blanket was done, and quickly stitched a row of single crochet around the edge to finish it up. I sewed in the couple loose ends that I hadn't stitched over already and Ta-Da! My blanket was done!
I wrote this post, not only as an excuse to show off another of my completed projects, but to encourage everyone who crochets to not worry if you find out you aren't following your pattern exactly. Especially when it comes to blankets and other similar things, it doesn't necessarily mean your project is ruined or you need to pull out row upon row of completed work. Most of the time, it means you have created your own unique pattern! Unless you think it really looks bad, you are probably going to be the only one to ever know there was a mess up. It's important to remember that in the end, all the trials and tribulations we go through don't matter when we look at the end result and see something beautiful. I love this blanket, mistakes and all, because it reminds me of how much fun I had making it. It reminds me of my baby girl grabbing the skein of yarn, and taking off giggling before I could grab her, and undoing almost a foot of stitches in the process. It reminds me of my husband laughing and rolling his eyes when I got my yarn out to work on while we watched a hockey game (I stitch faster when the game is stressful!). It reminds me of the girls I work with teasing me when I complained that I was hungry, because I had been working on it during break instead of eating. I know it seems silly, but this blanket has a part of me that will go with it. It was made with love and care, and whoever ends up with it (whether one of the girls at work has a boy, or it goes on my etsy shop) will appreciate the hard work that went into making it.
I suppose that's enough for now. Check back soon as I will be posting more crochet patterns and completed projects as they come. I'm currently working on several, but the one I'm most excited about is an amigurumi of Kon - a character from the anime "Bleach"!
Don't forget to come take a look at my etsy shop, Arya's Creations, and check out other items made by hand with love. Feel free to make special requests too, as I love taking on new challenges.
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