Garter Stitch Striped Baby Blanket

Project Name: Garter Stitch Striped Baby Blanket
Time Taken to Finish: 3-4 weeks
Type of Yarn Used: Lion Brand Homespun Baby in Soft Violet and Snow White (Homespun Baby may be hard to find in stores...it was for me, anyway)
Amount of Yarn Used: 4-5 skeins, one skein for each row (had to use a little more for some rows because one skein was not enough to have them match the width of the previous rows)
Needles Used: US size 10 needles
What I Liked About the Project: No purling.  My last baby blanket was in stockinette and each purled row seemed to take twice as long as a knit row.
What I Didn't Like About the Project: Even after knitting swatches to determine how many stitches to cast on, I miscalculated and made it way too wide.  I had to pull it apart and start over because I would not have had enough yarn to finish it at that width.  Also, because the yarn unravels very easily, I had to tie a knot at the end of each piece of fringe.  That took quite a while!

This project was knitted for my friends April and Mike, who are expecting.  I actually knitted it before the socks in my last post, but I wanted to make sure they received it before I put up any pictures. 

I wish the Homespun Baby yarn was more widely available.  From looking around on the web, it sounds like Lion Brand may be discontinuing it.  That's too bad, because there are no equivalent baby colors in their regular Homespun line.

My First Knitted Socks

Here's my first attempt at knitting socks:

I used a pattern from a book called Charmed Knits - it's a book of Harry Potter themed knitting projects (see Currently Reading below).  I modified the pattern a bit to make them ankle socks and I used an orange wool yarn instead of Gryffindor colors.  So they're not really Harry Potter socks, but the pattern was easy to follow and it saved me having to find a sock pattern online.  They were much easier to knit than I thought - it probably only took me 3-4 hours of knitting per sock.

Speaking of feet, I managed to give myself a nice, deep cut on the ball of my left foot yesterday.  I had been sewing curtains for our living room and was standing on the couch to reach the top of the window to see how the curtains looked.  When I tried to step off of the couch, I slipped.  Unfortunately I had left several old curtain rods at the base of the couch and one had a sharp curved metal piece that was pointing upwards.  In my fall I managed to step on it and owww!  In addition to cutting my foot, I bruised it pretty good too so it's still hurting.  And I mangled the curtain rods so we had to throw them away.  Yippee!