Plaid Baby Afghan & Knit Newborn Caps

When starting this project, I knew that the final steps of weaving the various color yarns through the body of the afghan would be a fairly tedious job - I just didnt realize HOW tedious it would be. It was tedious. As tedious as organizing an entire library according to the dewey decimal system from scratch. I started weaving the pieces through, and half an hour later I only had a few rows completed. I honestly thought that this part would go much much quicker than this - it is just weaving yarn through a mesh blanket after all. YAWN, this project got really boring very quickly. I made it more interesting by taking it down to the pub with me. A couple pints of ale + conversation with some friends made it much more pleasant.
However, I do like the overall effect and the end results:





I'm sure that if I were to actually make the afghan again I'd think of a couple ways to modify it to make it simpler. I'm half tempted to write out my pattern, but I know that its inspired by a pattern that I saw in a book somewhere almost 10 years ago and not knowing how much like the original pattern it is, I dont want to risk infringing upon anyones copyright.

Also, I made a knit cap for my little niece.


It looks SO SMALL. I didnt follow a written pattern, just swatched the yarn, then Googled the average head circumference of a newborn (14" by the way) and went from there. I'm hoping it fits. In the past, I've been notorious for making hats that were too "short" for most adults - mainly myself, I have a HUGE head - but fit on kids. I'm worried about this one because I wasn't following a written pattern, I was just eyeballing it. I had a gnawing feeling that the hat was not going to fit the kids head. So, I've started to make a back up just a little bit bigger.


The Sideways Shell Afghan turned out well. I just love love love this pattern.



The Winnie the Pooh quilt is still in progress, and will be for a while. Really, with everything else that I'm working on, my goal is to have it done by the kids first birthday. If its done anytime before then, then I'm ahead of the game.

I have a feeling that baby/child patterns are going to be my focus for a while.