Blanket mania

I'm currently working on a ripple blanket in gender-neutral colours, as the parents aren't finding out the sex of the baby until it's born. What's up with that lately? Oh sure, I understand you want it to be a surprise, but it's not very convenient for the crafters who'd like to make you something ahead of time. *sigh* Well this is where I'm up to so far, I'm using the Neat Ripple Pattern by Attic24 http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/neat-ripple-pattern.html which is a really nice one and it's easy too. She's even put step-by-step piccies up so you can see where you've nuts it up. Awesome. I really love this pattern because it's pretty AND it's all in double crochet, my favourite stitch.

I also did another baby ripple blanket in gender-neutral colours using a different pattern, Bev's Baby Ripple Afghan: http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/cp2.html This one is all in single crochet and takes a little longer, but geez it's nice.

Speaking of neutral colour schemes, I've recently completed a blanket for a wedding gift and had major dramas picking something neutral that would suit both bride and groom. The bride does like pink and I started with this idea:

But it was too girly, I figured that out by the time I'd done the 9 centre squares and pieced them together. This pattern was my own using techniques I'd learned by looking at various websites. It was all ok though, I wanted to make a blanket for a friend who was having a baby girl (the convenience of knowing beforehand!) so this was perfect for her.

After trawling the web for pattern and colour scheme ideas that would be both pleasing to the eye and gender-neutral for the future married couple, I decided on this. Chocolate brown, beige and cream mitred squares. I looked at a few patterns for the squares but I got confused (not hard when following someone else's instructions!) and just made it up. A 5-round square in cream, then changed colours and did only 2 sides of the square for the rest of it. There were 16 squares in total, and once it was all sewn up it's about 1.5m square.

It's rather heavy and should be pretty warm. The stitches are solid with very little in the way of gaps throughout the blanket, only really on the corners of the squares where you do the turns.

I've done a whole heap more in the way of gift blankets and will post the pics and info later, these are just the most recent ones.