In preparation of crocheting this blanket I knew I needed to do some swatching. I’m not terribly good or familiar with crochet, I consider myself an experienced beginner and just kind of muddle through since most of my other projects have been toys. (If they stay together and hold stuffing then I did it good enough.)

I ended up doing three separate swatches for this pattern because I could not get the cast on edge a loose as it needed to be to match up the rest of the blanket.

My swatches went from bottom to top starting with the F hook for all (3.75mm), then the middle was started with H (5mm) and F for the rest, then the top was started I (5.5mm) and F for the rest.

While the middle swatch looked okay from a distance, up close the stitches on the initial chain were still smaller than the stitches worked on top. The latest swatch has stitches that visibly match. So when I start for real I plan on making my initial chain with the size I hook.

Nov 27: Started the project even though I haven’t finished Max’s blanket because I have to order more yarn for his again. Since I’ll be waiting for that yarn to come in I figured I might as well jump on our little girl’s blanket. She’s due in about 6 weeks, so I don’t have much time to waste.

Dec 11: Finished the main color portion of the blanket & I’m getting ready to toss it in the wash, just in case the purple might bleed a bit, I’d like to keep it off the cream colored border. (I used about 8.5 balls of the main color.)
I’ve sewn in the ends all over, and used a lighter colored wash/dry safe yarn to mark the corners while it’s in the wash. I didn’t want to risk stitch markers dying or disappearing in there.

I finished this on Dec 16th. I’m really quite a beginner to crochet, and once I played with swatches for a while I had no problems with this pattern.

As far as the yarn, I did have one place the skein was tied with a knot on my first ball of the Shine Sport, but that was all. All the other balls I’ve used for this project were fine, and had no knots.

Since there is no baby to post with this blanket yet I’ve included her silly 3 1/2 year old brother for scale. :)