baby blankets

two couples in atlanta - very good friends - are having babies in august - and their due dates are a week apart!  babies everywhere!  it's so fun to think of these little ones growing up at the same time and being friends like their moms and dads are.  it makes me sad that i'm not in atlanta to see my friends get more and more pregnant, and then to see these babies get bigger and bigger.  but that's the way things are...and it's one more fantastic reason to visit.

a woman at my new job was knitting a baby blanket for her grandchild-to-be, and i got inspired to try to knit baby blankets for these little ones.  things i have knitted in the past: scarves.  end of list.  but a baby blanket can just be a square scarf - right?!  off to michael's i went to buy some yarn and a circular knitting needle.

thomas and lindsey's baby girl gets a light green blanket, just knit knit knit row after row.  pros: i can do other things while knitting (tv, audiobooks, conversations) because the motion is repetitive and i can look up sometimes; blanket is reversible!  cons: just knitting gets boring; blanket is awesome (i messed up one stitch, but that is just proof that it is a miss claire original), but a little plain.  my first ever baby blanket is 28 inches square, and the same color as my favorite baby blanket from my childhood.  baby girl will be so snuggly in it!  it took about three weeks to make.

after making one blanket using just the knit stitch thousands of times, i got bored/crazy and went on youtube to learn how to purl.  people, purling is easy.  i mean, i guess i should have known that - it's just a backwards knit stitch.  i then googled a simple knit/purl baby blanket pattern and voila!  one false start (had to watch another youtube video to learn how to correctly switch from the knit to purl stitch and then redo the first three (tragic) rows), and i was off for real.  mike and kelly's baby boy gets a light blue blanket that also took about three weeks to make.  pros: i think it's prettier because there's a pattern, and it's more interesting for me to knit, but not too complicated: the majority of the blanket is just repeating these four rows, and i used a chip clip to remind myself which row i was knitting.  i'm so classy.  (the full pattern is here.)

close up of the fanciness:

cons: i made this one a little smaller than the first one, and perhaps it's too small - it's 20 inches wide and 27 inches long.  it will fit nicely over a car seat or a small baby, but if i had it to do over again i'd make it larger and thus more versatile.  it's also not reversible because of the fanciness on the "good" side.

it was so FUN to make these blankets, especially because they're made for babies i already love because their mamas and dads are so awesome.  yay for homemade presents!

(does this officially make me an old lady?  my grandma and i were knitting at the same time when i was in florida...haha...)