In this year of first retirements, I’ve crocheted 4 baby blankets for friends. It’s been a very welcome place of joy in a very strange 9 months. I find that I fall in love with each piece over the course of its making, subjecting it to photoshoots which seem to get increasingly elaborate… This week, I’m sharing each of the 7 baby blankets I’ve ever made, here and on Instagram. May it be a place of rest and joy for you, too, in this year we call 2020.
#1 THE HEIRLOOM
- Made: 2013
- Finished B.B. (before baby): NOPE!! But the baby still looked like a baby when it was done.
- Relative difficulty & PITA: 1,000,000/10 because I really had no idea what I was doing. All fault mine – I’d totally recommend the pattern.
- Pattern Used: Fluffy Clouds Baby Blanket
In 2012, the internet taught me to crochet. As a kid, I had “learned” to knit and crochet (translation: I hated the learning process and so quit before I ever really learned anything).
As an adult, I started with a craft store kit, the kind of purchase guaranteed to leave you with an object you’ve spent way too much time on and don’t really want (yay!). In the process, I discovered the public university that is Youtube and its reference library, Google. I graduated to various simple scarves I didn’t really want either, and then fell into geek crochet land – gleefully making hats from sci-fi, fantasy and gaming. Since I talked about these hats way too much at work, a friend told me about Boob Beanies when she was pregnant with her second child. I mean, you know I made this.
I also decided I would MAKE HER A BABY BLANKET! And promptly google image searched for the most beautiful baby blanket I could find with an “easy” rating.
Friends, do not do this. It may not be as “easy” as you think.
But you’ve already told your friend you’re making it (and showed her the pattern – again, don’t do this – so you can’t back out now).
Luckily, I didn’t know any of this yet. The “Fluffy Clouds Baby Blanket” was and is so beautiful and I couldn’t wait to get started. It’s a great pattern, and I totally recommend it for an heirloom quality piece.
What it’s not, is quick. Especially for a beginner who’s never made a blanket or large project. To get those gorgeous, dimensional clouds required fancy shells and rows upon rows to prop them up. If that means nothing to you, just know that to my beginner brain and fingers every single one of those clouds TOOK FOREVER. Instant gratification for me, the crocheter, was right out. Now, you may say that a baby blanket for someone else’s baby isn’t about me. Well…if something is gonna get done, I can tell you, at least some of it needs to be about me. If I knew then what I know now, I’m not sure I would have finished it.
So, not surprisingly, there was a lot of proof this was handmade – because there are lots of surviving fuckups in the finished work. ESPECIALLY as a beginner, the idea that after laboring over this thing, I would then RIP OUT finished work to correct mistakes was beyond ludicrous. Suffice to say, the finished project was square…ish.
Does any of this matter? Of course not. The finished piece was so beautiful, and like any good mom, what I brought into the world was perfect in my eyes. Fluffy clouds! Lacy border! Satin ribbon woven through that border, for crying out loud!
In the time it took to start, lose patience, rage quit, re-start, slog through, then finish in a triumphant blaze of glory, the baby had been born… But you know, creation runs on its own schedule. For babies, and for their blankeys.
When I started making baby blankets I had no idea that I would feel my own personal connection to creation and possibility. And when I send one off to a friend, it’s not just the finished piece that goes into the mail. A tiny version of the hope, and joy, and labor that accompany every birth is there, too. And every stitch is a tiny spell-worked blessing, because I couldn’t do this if I didn’t care.
But I still don’t think I’ll ever make this one again.
First Retirements 
Leave a comment