Crochet comeback

I am a crocheter.

Really, I am. I know I have shown very little evidence of it in the lifetime of this blog—notwithstanding this post, which has more hits than any other post I have written—but I was a crocheter long before I was a knitter.

Mainly I crocheted afghans. Between the ages of 15 and 30, I crocheted well over 100 afghans. You can imagine how I might have gotten a little burned out. But when my friend commissioned a baby blanket a couple of months ago, I knew I would crochet it rather than knit it. Crocheting is just faster. Or so I thought.

The whole project turned into a bit of an ordeal when I decided to design the pattern myself and crochet it out of fingering weight yarn. This blanket is based on a very similar design I did several years ago, except that the previous version had flowers around the border. Since this blankie had to be gender-neutral, I decided that flowers were out. Bring on the dots!

I crocheted the border motifs first and sewed them into strips. From those strips, I measured the dimensions of the center section. After doing a gauge swatch, I determined the number of stitches needed for the center, and away I went. When the center was almost done, I realized, to my great annoyance, that it was a bit narrower than I needed it to be. (Gauge swatches can lie!) Rather than rip out all that work, I added some rounds of single crochet around the edge before attaching the motifs.

I used Cascade Heritage sock yarn for this project, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. The blanket is so soft and cushy. If I had to make one complaint about the yarn, it would be that the it tends to be a bit splitty. But I think that mild annoyance was worth it in the end.