Knitters’ Row

This was crochet for a single sized bed.  I used 13 balls of Carron Simply Soft for this project and I think that it took FOREVER!!!  Each section of blue and pink color change was approx 1 ball, 20 rows.  I think the cast on was somewhere around 250 sts.  I had 5 balls of blue, 5 balls of pink, and 3 balls of green.  I used what I had left of a pink ball to do a chain linked/slip stitch edging on the blanket.  Simple, yet pretty.  This gets softer each time I wash it, but it did stretch out quite a bit when I first washed it.  I am not sure if it would do the same if knit.

This simple bear blanket was made from several granny squares sewn together.  Below is a simple pattern.  The eyes were simple crochet rounds to form a circle and placed on the face part of the bear.  The ears were crochet as half rounds and stitched on later.  This is a quick and easy baby gift if you are looking for something last minute.

This will be the final preemie set for the summer unless i get a good jump start on my Christmas presents and finish up some UFOs.  I finally found someone to take the items to the hospital for me.  I know they will get there safely because she works in the delivery unit.  I am not sure if all the sizes are right.  Some items are small, some are large, but I was figuring that all babies are different sizes too.

This whole set was done with DK baby yarn by Berroco.  It is super soft and will wash very well.  I think the variegated blue and the variegated pink on the blanket was a Bernat yarn, but i can’t find the colors at the store any more, they are probably still on line though.  I just used a single crochet for the booties, and a single crochet for the hat.  The hat also has a small shell stitch around the edge.  The blanket was done in Tunisian Entrelac Crochet and was very difficult to follow in the pattern book that I got, but once i got it figured out it was pretty easy.  The hard part was that the author of the pattern didn’t have the pattern all on one page or even in a set of pages.  To get the blanket done you had to flip through the book from page 3 to page 7, then to page 11, pack to page 5…..etc.  So good luck for anyone who tries this out.

This is the next in the sets that I’ll be sending to the NICU for this month. I plan on doing one more then starting some new sets next month, but I’m not sure yet what patterns I’ll use. The pattern is a diamond lace done on size 7 needles with fingering-weight yarn.

I decided to start a donation project and found that the Children’s Hospital in our area needs preemie items. This set is crochet using two different yarns. The yellow is “Pound of Love” by Lion Brand and the blue “tweed” is by Plymouth. There is a blanket, a hat, and booties which are all stitched with single crochet. The blanket stitch is single crochet in the front and the next stitch single crochet in the back. I repeated this for the whole blanket. I hope to be able to get a set done every month to be able to send to the hospital.