Hooded Baby Blanket

It’s just shameful. Not only is this the first photo I’ve managed to get of my (not-so)  newborn niece, Shelby, I even forgot to make her her blanket until my sister reminded me.

I ended up crocheting this, instead of knitting. (I prefer knit but let’s face it, crocheting is FAST.) My sister picked the yarn (and boy was it a PITA) and I decided on the pattern. The blanket is 150 stitches across and enough half double crochets to make it square. The pattern was 5 rows of green, 3 of pink, 1 of green, 3 of pink and ended with 5 rows of green.

The hood was an improvisation and if I was wiser with these things I would have written down what I did. I think I started with 20-30 stitches and decreased by 2 each row. But don’t quote me on that. I finished it with a single crocheted border of green, then pink around the edges.

Zeb tried it out to make sure the size would last her many years. Her 2 year old sister is still using hers, as is her 15 year old sister (my second-ever crocheted blanket!). Hopefully Shelby will love this one as much.

Even with the knit hat I’m making her, I’ll still be left with WAY too much yarn. I guess that’s a drawback of not following a real pattern.