The idea here is that I like having projects to work on, I get ideas for projects a lot, but I generally don't work on them enough to actually finish them. So after being inspired by some blogging friends, I thought maybe having the goal of blog posts to push me would make me more productive. Oh, don't worry, I won't work too hard. I still plan on having plenty of lay around and do nothing time in my life. A girl can dream of having it all: laziness and a sense of fulfillment .And see? Its already working. I finally finished the baby blanket for baby Jack! Only 4 months after the baby shower, 2 months after the birth, and 1 month after christmas. But better late than never. I originally had the idea in Scotland over the summer. While in the country with the second highest number of sheep Per capita (after New Zealand) we saw a lot of beautiful wool products and, well, a lot of sheep. Specifically we drove around a lot of sheep on tiny one lane roads in th
e Hig
hlands. The times we narrowly missed hitting one were the only times I was distracted from the amazing scenery. I was particularly struck by the colors. The heather was in bloom so the mountains were covered in many shades of green and purple. The roadsides were lined with bright orange lilies (if anyone knows what these are, let me know, they were everywhere!), and the rowan trees were fruiting with deep red berries. So, as soon as I got home I bought yarn in those colors and I went to work. I did the bulk of the blanket, about 30 inches by 30 inches, in double crochet. The idea was to Loch blue in the foreground, followed by rowan, ferns and heather. Poofy sheep would then go in the middle. My favorite part of the baby blanket my grandmother made for me, which I inventively named Bunny, was a raised plush rabbit tail. So I cut the sheep out of white fleece and sowed them on. After several failed attempts to embroider cute but realistic sheep faces, I finally settled on simple knot eyes, floppy ears and outlines of legs. Finally, to coordinate with the white and black of the sheep I did a border in grey. I did two rows of single stitches around the blanket then chained 4 and single stitched into every 3rd stitch. Viola, first goal accomplished!
