I was thrilled when Taylor asked me to make her a new blanket. I was afraid I was done with blankies until I had a great grandchild.

Taylor picked out the yarn and the colours and I placed an order with Michael’s. I used the huge needles (25mm) as tests using smaller needles didn’t work so well. Because a pattern doesn’t show up with such chunky yarn I knit using a plain garter stitch.

Before I ran out of yarn my arms, wrists and hands couldn’t handle the weight any longer so she got a smaller bonus blanket from the remaining yarn.

In my ongoing attempt to empty my bins of yarn I knit this small baby blanket. I had a free pattern that I really wanted to use but I didn’t have the right colours of yarn. I found a similar-looking pattern, also a freebie, and thought I could make it work with the yarn I had.

I really liked the pattern created in both the pink and the white. I still have some of the yarn left, but not enough for another one.

Now I need to decide what to do with it – a donation or save it for my hope chest (hoping for a great grandchild).

I had yarn left from the previous afghan I made but not enough of any colour to form a pattern. I decided to do one large granny square to use up the yarn. It turned out reasonably large and will be nice to cover a lap. It will be a donation.

I adapted this pattern from one of Mum’s afghan patterns. I wasn’t able to manage the stitch used in the pattern but I used the pattern as a reference for colour changes. Since I didn’t have enough yarn for the changes the pattern called for I substituted a few colours into the scheme.

I made another afghan using this shell stitch pattern (which I kept for myself). The note on the pattern listed a number of stitches to use but this is much narrower than the one I made for myself; I probably didn’t update the note when I finished mine.

However, the piece is still a good size and I don’t think I’d have been able to managed the colours and rows as well had it been wider.

This will be a donation in honour of Mum’s birthday in November.