Jungle Time

Okay, so when you ask your mom to pick up yarn for you and she has to FedEx it because you are working on a deadline and you live five hours apart from each other, it doesn't always happen with out strings (feel free to enjoy any and all puns that I accidentally put in there) attached. At the same time I was planning on attending a baby shower for my friend, my mother was planning on attending a baby shower as well. A young lady she knows, lets call her April, was having a baby shower. Mom and another friend bought a very nice mattress for the crib that April was planning on using. However, a little something more is right up Mom's alley and she asked if I might be willing to knit a blanket for April's baby. I said I would love to, as soon as you send me the yarn I need because I will need the needles in the blanket I am currently knitting to knit the blanket you want.

My instructions were simple. They were having a little boy, and there was a jungle themed room. Sounds simple but when you do not live near yarn stores, sometimes finding neat yarn ideas is rather difficult. So after a quick trip to, of all places, Wal-Mart, I found the perfect color combination. I purchased four skeins (two of each color) of a really bright green and a really bright blue. I knitted the blanket using one strand of each color at the same time. The pattern I used made the blanket look like it was a stripped. Believe it or not when I got done it only took two skeins (and about a foot more of blue yarn) to knit the entire blanket.

As it turns out the baby arrived a few weeks early much to every one's surprise. I hand delivered the blanket to the dad when I visited my mother over Easter. He seemed quite thrilled to know that we took the time to make something special for them and mentioned that the colors worked perfectly.

Can You See Them?

If you can see the pink camo items above you might notice I am in baby knitting mode. My friend who I mentioned in my previous post with the baby blanket was also the recipient of these items as well. She told me a story a few months ago about her father and husband coming home with a present for the baby. It was an outfit in, yes, you guessed it, pink camo. This is rather befitting of this family and seems only right to pass the tradition on to the baby when she is born. As a matter of fact this outfit has been deemed the one that the baby will be brought home in. My only hope is that they don't lose her, being dressed in camo and all.

It took a couple of months but I finally found the Red Heart, pink camo yarn. As cute as it is when it comes out of the skein I must admit I was a little disappointed knitting with it. The cap was knitted in the round and took me just a few hours to finish. The booties were knitted in less than four hours with a pattern I found on the Internet which required a small amount of sewing. When they unwrapped the items they knew it was pink camo and even tried to find the baby's feet in the stomach to see if they would fit. Of course the dad to be tried to put the cap on. Might have to see if I have enough yarn left to make a cap for dad. Just a thought.

Cotton Candy vs. Jolly Rancher

A friend of mine is having a baby. Back in October, when she found out, she broke the news to me by asking if I might be willing to knit her a baby blanket. With nine months to go you would think that would be plenty of time to get one done. So I started planning immediately. I knew I wanted a specific pattern book of baby blanket patterns, it is a sister to another book of patterns I have on adult blankets and throws. She is not exactly your typical mother to be and this blanket sort of needed to represent that. I know you are saying the blanket is about the baby not the parents, but since we have not met the little bundle of joy, it needs to be all about mom and dad right now. I was keeping that in mind while picking out yarn. They were told the baby would be a girl, and they have decided on a name, Samantha Renee Wright, Sami for short. Now we have to keep in mind that sometimes ultrasounds don't tell us all we need to know so there is always a chance she might not be a she, so that is also in my head as I pick a yarn. I was thinking something fun and almost tied dyed. So I picked a yarn that had flecks of pink, blue, yellow and white. It was variegated and neat looking. As I started knitting however the blanket looked more like cotton candy, which is OK because Sami's mom likes her cotton candy during the fair.

I started knitting in November, and ran out of yarn. My mother picked up the last skein I needed in March and I finished this 29x32 blanket the week of the baby shower. When the mom to be unwrapped it she seemed tickled with it, and her husband said it reminded him of jolly ranchers. She was able to dissect that I knitted it with two strands of yarn and had done a seed stitch border so it would lay flat. No matter what it reminds him of it will be sweet, especially when Sami gets here.