Katie's blanket

A while back, I decided that I was going to crochet afghans for my family members.  I even posted about it on my blog asking each person for their preference of pattern and color. Since then, I've finished a green blanket and pillowcase for my sister Sarah, a dark blue blanket for my brother Tommy, a black pillowcase with a white skull on it for my youngest brother Simon (he's a teenager; don't ask), a pillowcase for my sister-in-law Leslie, and a pillowcase for my Aunt Pamela. I have a granny square afghan in the works for my parents, which is coming along pretty slowly. I've had half of it done for about half a year now, and the squares for the other half have been done for several months now, but I haven't gotten all of them sewn together yet. Slow going. I've got about a foot done on a dark green afghan for my in-laws, and come to think of it, I can't remember if I even told them I'm making them a blanket. Oops. And I'm about twenty rows until the end of a blue blanket for my sister Katie, the target of this rambly post, lol.

So the Katie blanket. In order to keep the various projects straight in my head and to make it easier to talk about them to non-crocheters who wouldn't understand what I'm talking about when I describe them via patterns, I just use the person's name who'll be getting the blanket. I got the pattern out of a paperback called Our Best Afghans A to Z, which I really like because many of the patterns are nice or can be adapted to where I'll like them. Oddly, despite the fact that I like many of the patterns in this book, Katie's is the only one I'm making from it. The rest came from various other sources such as a Crochet-a-Day calendar and other books. At any rate, it's not a full-sized blanket in the sense that it could cover a double bed or anything. It could probably be used on a twin bed, but I don't think she has any of those in her house, lol. No, this is what I refer to as a halfghan, something you can drape over the back of a couch or have folded at the foot of a large bed for especially cold nights when the other person in bed doesn't want extra blankets piled on. It's a nice thick pattern that will have a large ruffled border and ribbons woven along the edges as well. I think this blanket will be mostly decorative, and I hope she uses it as such. :)

I originally started this a while back (in July, I think), but have put it off periodically for other projects like starting up my Etsy store and making products to put up there. Now that I've got a number of products on Etsy, I'm taking a break from making little ball decorations and pillowcases to work on something larger for a while. I decided to work on Katie's blanket because the pattern is pretty basic and I can work on it while watching the political debates or old Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes. A while back, I had to frog seventeen rows because of a mistake along the edge. Normally, I wouldn't mess with a single stitch mistake, but this was going to screw up the ruffled edge and weaving the ribbon in and out! So I frogged the seventeen rows and soon after put the blanket up to work on other things. Since picking it back up again a couple days ago, I've made all those rows back plus some! I've added thirty rows in the past couple days, putting me at row 69 of 84. Then it's the border, adding the ribbon and being done with it! I think that if I have the time and opportunity this week, I can have it finished by Saturday or Sunday. I'll have to make sure to take pictures of it to post here. I should also find my pictures of the other two blankets (and maybe the pillowcases as well) so I can post them all as well. I'd like to start making afghans for Etsy, but I'm going to wait on that until I finish the ones for my family. :) I'll post my progress to keep you updated. It's nice having a blog where I can just blather about crafts, lol.