Beneath The Blankey Round 4: The Touchy-Feely

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.  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.

• Made: January-March 2020
• Finished B.B. (before baby): Ye-e-e-s?  If I remember right I mailed this on the due date?  But the baby was kind enough to wait for me, so it counts!
• Relative difficulty & PITA: 5/10. So much counting.
• Pattern Used: Bernat Crochet Diamond Bobble Baby Blanket
• Yarn Used: Bernat Baby Velvet in White

I started this blanket the day after I left my job, January 18^th.  Remember January?  So full of possibility!

However, 9 months later, on October 15, 2020, my January plans seem reckless to the point of ridiculous.  What did I do, you ask?  I flew cross-country (two full flights!) to a nature retreat for a contact improvisation workshop.  That’s right – I spent the first part of 2020 in full body contact with total strangers, sharing a cabin, nude sauna, hot springs and a dance studio.  Oh, man…January…

Anyway, I knew January would also be about baby blankets for me because I had a friend due on St. Patrick’s Day.  I was riding high after THE MODERN, so not only did I tell mom-to-be I’d make her a blanket, we picked out the pattern together.  I know, I know…who even am I?  But it’s cool.  All’s well that ends well, and sometimes you just have to live dangerously.

This pattern uses strategically placed bobble stitches (bobble bobble bobble) to create a textural diamond lattice across the surface.

Between the sculptural pattern and the softness of the yarn, this blankey more than earned its name as THE TOUCHY-FEELY.  It was a magnet for touch while I worked on it, getting more love from the people around me – in 4 different states! – than anything I can remember.  (Don’t worry, I washed it.)

To make that diamond pattern, each row in the repeat required a different mental arithmetic so that the bobbles (bobble bobble bobble*) lined up perfectly.  It’s an easy pattern, but definitely not a mindless one, and I spent my fair share of time ripping out rows when I found a stray bump where it shouldn’t have been.  But egads!  This was a beautiful piece.  I’m a sucker for understated aesthetics, so the pattern-created-by-texture-instead-of-color made me swoon just a little.  And the chunkiness of the yarn made everything delightfully squashy and brought down the formality of the pattern, keeping it from being too proper.

Even though I made a full gauge swatch (the way you determine how big the finished piece will be) I way overshot the width of the row.  That meant to get the proportions I wanted, this ended up being a rather large square.  Basically a baby blanket for adults.  (Actually, that sounds pretty good.)

I also gave mom a video preview during blocking**, which gives me this delightful piece of film where I unveil it like a Christmas ham.

Which is perfect, because this mom and I have a tradition of cooking, baking and snuggling under warm blankets in October to watch Christmas movies, because that’s what we need just then.

Merry Christmas, every one!

*Please tell me you are saying it like “gobble gobble gobble.” It will make me happy.

**Blocking is a process I hate (and if you’re a crocheter you’ve already noticed from THE CLASSIC that I don’t do it, even when I should).  Basically, by laying a damp piece of crochet work on a flat surface you can adjust the final shape and ensure the stitches look their best (especially valuable with unusual shapes, lace, etc.).  It really does make a difference in the finished piece, but…I don’t wanna.