Newsflash - I actually finished something!

Back in November, I won a contest over at Pediascribe for a beautiful baby blanket from iHemstitch. After looking at the wonderful designs, I decided to pick a 'boy' themed design and give the blanket to Mary for her baby boy (wow, was it tempting though to go with something 'girly' and keep it for us!). I chose to crochet the border on the blanket myself - figuring that since it's been years (approximately 6-1/2 to be exact) since I've finished a crocheting project (or any other, for that matter), a smaller one like this would be a good way to get back into it.

And having a deadline didn't hurt either. :)

I didn't have a chance to start working on it until right after Christmas. That gave me a bit less than a month until the baby was due. Well, baby Eric came early - but since we still haven't made it down there to visit yet, I guess I'm still 'on time' - because I finished the blanket this week!

I thought I would share how it turned out, since I'm rather proud of it, and I promised Karen that I would post pictures. I chose the triangles and arches pattern for the border - which involved 3 rows of crocheting.

Here is the blanket 'before' (while trimming off the excess edges and then after it was trimmed):

Here's a close-up of the 'hemstitched' edge - you can see the tiny holes that the crochet stitches go in:

The first row (single crochets) and the start of the second row...

Second row done:

The second row (bottom) and the start of the third row (top)...

And.... done!

Now we just have to stay healthy enough - and hope for good weather for next weekend - so that we can go down to visit and see baby Eric, and give him his new blanket. It was fun to work on something blue for a change... :)

Thank you Karen and thank you to Kendra from iHemstitch!