Blankets = love

People do lots of things to show their love.  Some of these things are more outrageous than others. (baking cookies = normal.  cutting off an ear = less OK.)

For myself, if I am cooking for you that is a good sign I like you.  But another big sign is if I crochet things for you.  If you get one of my happy little amigurumi, or lumpy scarves, it means that I thought about you while I was toiling away on my crochet in front of the TV while watching the baseball playoffs or reality TV (but sadly no hockey yet, you greedy evil bastards).

Nevermind the fact that I'm ugly, I'm made with LOOOOOVE!

Anyway. For my nieces I always show how much I love them by making them a blanket.  And as any crochet or knitting enthusiast knows, if you are making a blanket for someone it must mean you like them a great deal because those stupid things take pretty much FOREVER to make.  Twenty hours for a full size afghan is pretty optimal, it could easily be a lot longer than that.  This is something that non-crafters don't seem to understand when they want to buy said afghan from you for like $50 (this is before you chase them while brandishing your hook/needles and screaming obscenities about their Scroogian shopping habits.)

So for my nieces last birthday, I made them each a "starghan", which is a star-shaped afghan.  Nevermind the fact that these were meant to be their Christmas presents for LAST YEAR...

The first one was green...

and the second was blue!

BUT!  Very soon, my two cute nieces are going to have a cute baby brother, so I found it necessary to make a blanket for him as well.  But I didn't want to copy the same pattern I did for the girls' blankets.  For one, even though the picture doesn't give it away, the starghans ended up pretty large, at least big enough for a kids bed or an adult lapghan.  So I wanted to do something that sort of fit with theirs, but was more appropriately sized for a baby.

Thus, the spiderman blanket was created!

(humming the theme song from the old cartoon)

I owe Debbie21 on Ravelry a big thanks for this one, she created this blanket long before I did and furnished me with her notes on how she did it.  I thought that this one was a great fit with the girls' blankets because it is also a multi-pointed blanket, but at the same time it is baby sized and definitely more masculine.  That, and baby boy is already the most awesome and cool baby because his aunty made him a wicked cool blankie!  This one is worked centre-out, so you do the black zig-zag lines as you progress, and then the other black weblines are added after by chaining from the outside edge and attaching at each zig-zag point as you go along before finishing at the middle.  I was really pleased with how this turned out, but it is far too much work to make as a blanket to sell.  It is really a labour of love and one that you'd only make for a baby you really care about.

 And of course Christmas is coming too.  And while I'm not doing an entirely homemade Christmas (did that once and pretty much killed my hands with repetitive strain for a while), I am working on a few things... which I can't tell you about just in case you spilled the beans to the receiving parties!  In the meantime, keep your hooks going and stay tuned...