cancel those bobbins!

Check it out! That looks pretty ripply to me. After another four or so failed attempts and angry stomach knots, I started looking through some more crochet books for tips. In one, I read that it didn't really matter what part of the chain you went through when you were crocheting into the foundation chain. Even though this was completely contrary to the advice in my pattern, for the sake of my sanity I decided to give it a go just poking the hook through another part of the chain. And it worked! I'm sure there is a very good reason not to do it this way (maybe the edge won't look quite as neat or be so flexible, maybe?) but it is good enough for me, for my first crocheted blanket. Just as I had hoped, once I got that first row done, it was super-duper easy and my recently lost new-found crochet love came back straight away.

If I knew that our friends were having a girl, I'd love to do the blanket all in pink and white because it reminds me so much of nougat bars (remember them?) but I don't know what the baby will be and I want to use up some of my multicoloured wool stash, so I am going to go for completely random stripes for that ultimate homemade/make do and mend aesthetic.

The light was fading by the time I took this photo, but you can see I have completed four ripples. Hooray! I have decided to promote myself to actual blanket making now. I'm just trying to decide how wide the blanket should be and then I'm going to make a start. Exciting!

I was really finding myself getting into a rhythm with this and was able to watch (well, listen to) TV or chat to Graham while I was doing it. I did make a few mistakes as a result, but it was really easy to see where I had gone wrong and unravel it back to there. This is definitely another point to crochet in the great crochet vs. knitting debate. That's the one that goes on in my head. Crochet is winning, by the way. Sorry knitting.

I fully expect that my blanket will look a bit wonky, but I also expect to love it so much that I won't want to part with it. Perhaps once I've made this baby blanket, I'll make a full-size blanket for myself. Maybe. There's still the small matter of 15 other things on the craftathon 2011 list, though I'm happy to be properly tackling one at the moment. I can crochet! Yippee!

p.s. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to leave comments of crochet encouragement for me this week. They have really helped :)