Crafty endings, Crafty beginnings

As you can see from my post title I have finished a project or 2! 

I have been asked by a lady who I see on the bus most days and lives in the village to knit a baby blanket it white for her first grandchild who is due in September. I have finished it: 

This is a feather and fan blanket in Patons DK FAB yarn. Its taken a while for me to get this one done as it turned out to be very rough going on my wrists. Its only about 3 weeks ago I realised i was using 3.75 needles when I should have been using 4's and I knit quite tight anyway so it was hard going. It is a pattern repeat of 6 rows but during the last 7 repeats I couldnt seem to get the pattern right and kept losing a stitch (not wraping the yarn properly) so a lot of unpicking and reworking has taken place very close to the end. Im glad its finished now and Im very pleased about the end result. I will get a few more pictures of the full size when the weather cheers up a bit.

I have used the same baby hat pattern booklet for a long time now and felt I needed a new one so I treated myself to this. I love the different hats and one weekend went all out and made the 3 hats you see in the above picture. Im really loving the patterns and the ones ive made are 6-12 months but the booklet goes from 0-7 years so I plan on making a few more.  

There is another Dad to be at work so I am making another blanket. Im going for a ripple blanket from Lucy at Attic 24's blog (I love love love this blog, Lucy is amazing, you should definatly check it out). I have used this one before with a solid colour and a verigated yarn but this time I am going for coloured stripes. After much deliberation on what colours worked best with what I decided to use the Stylecraft Special DK colours of Plum, Magenta, Clematis and Candyfloss, Dont they look amazing: 

I was going to use a different combination but once I started working the colours these ones just seems to scream "pick us pick us, we work best" so I went with it and I love the result. I have 2 other shades of pink that didnt work well as part of the ripple but may be used to edge the blanket.

 As you can tell they will be having a girl! 

I also treated myself to a few of the blues from the Stylecraft Special DK range and my next project will be a blue baby ripple blanket with a twist. The twist being that between every 2 rows of blue there will be 1 row of white and I will also edge the blanket with white. I cant wait to get started on that one! 

I love love love working with Rico Design Essential Cotton DK as its a super smooth, super shiny yarn. I have a set of the really bright bold colours that I have made some jar covers out of but came across some muted pastel hues in The Pincushion and on a whim brought them, arent the divine

! 

Im not sure what they will become yet, im thinking along the lines of a circle cushion cover or maybe even a ripple cushion cover, something that is beautiful and does the yarn justice. Pop back soon to see what Ive decided on.