F-UFO Sighting

In the far reaches of darkness it flashed.  A dull light color amidst the dark.  What could it be?  It was obviously larger than a dropped stitch.  Was it a forgotten donation?  A gift that did not get mailed? 

With some trepidation, I reached my hand into the deep dark forgotten space and gently grabbed the wad o' stuff.  A F-UFO.  Forgotten UnFinished Object.  Yes, I had totally forgotten that this crochet blanket even existed. 

Sixty minutes.  A short hour of time.  That is all that it took to Remember and Finish the Object.

 Here it is.  A mirror image bit of crochet that results in a baby blanket.  There is not much of a real pattern.  It is just double crochet shells worked in three colors.

In the second photo, the arrow points to the middle strip where the "mirror" work begins.  The arrow shows the starting chain.  First, rows are worked in sequence from the chain.   Then the exact same "mirror" sequence is worked beginning from the base of that starting chain. 

No, it isn't rocket science.

No, it isn't an award worthy pattern.

No, it doesn't build lots of new connections in an aging brain.

But it is a sweet and useful baby blanket that deserves love.

And it is finished!

Tick Another One Off The List

Finally, after a month of Sundays, something is complete.  It turned out to be too small for an adult size television watching blanket.  So this one will likely be gifted to a very special baby who loves fine merino. 

Okay.  I admit it.  Not every new parent needs to worry about hand washing baby ooze from a wool blanket.  Here is the way I see it.  Odds are that a century or two ago there were lots of babies wrapped in plain home spun wool blankets.  Back in those days, superwash wool simply did not exist.  I'm not suggesting that this one should ever be washed down at the river by pounding with a rock.  But a nice soak in a no-rinse wool wash followed by a roll in a towel and then a nice flat overnight dry should not take too much time away from Angry Birds.

Many ends were woven in and then clipped.  I sure hope that I did a superb job of weaving.  The last thing that anyone needs is a wee one pulling on a loose thread.


The yarn is divine.  Actually it is di.ve Zenith.  Love this stuff.  It has lots of bounce and fantastic stitch definition. 

I only made a few adjustments to the Lion Brand pattern.  The pattern call for working with two strands of yarn.  Clearly there was not enough of Zenith in the stash for that, so I simply used one strand and kept to the  large needle.  The resulting fabric is very soft, airy and squishy. 

The texture of the simple block pattern looks woven.  Even in this pre-blocked photo that weave is very prominent.  The miracle that happened during the completion of this blanket is - wait for it - I never messed up!  Now I might have tinked a few stitches here and there.  But no frogging occurred in the making of this blanket!

It feels good to check something off the list.  Really good. 


PS - should you be curious, the rug is back on track and grew several inches past the mishap.