La vie décousue

Well, I decided it’s time to start intro­du­cing some new top­ics to this site. It is, after all, sup­posed to be la vie décousue (the ran­dom life).

My sis­ter is expect­ing her first child, and I am a very excited auntie. There’s a whole bunch of things I want to make for them, and I thought it might be fun to have series called Con­fine­ment Crafts or some­thing like that. I haven’t yet man­aged to come up with a clever title that con­veys what I am try­ing to say… Basic­ally, a series of items that can be made dur­ing preg­nancy. I don’t even know what to call this period. Con­fine­ment? Gestation?

Any­way, let’s just start with what I’m up to. I’m begin­ning by knit­ting a baby blanket. I think I’m being a little too ambi­tious on this one, though. I’ve made plenty of baby things before, includ­ing blankets, but since this is for my sis­ter, I thought I’d really go the dis­tance. I’m aim­ing for a moss stitch blanket about 1 square metre big. The thing is, I’m using 4-ply wool on 3mm needles, so it may end up tak­ing a looooon­nnngggg time to com­plete. I began this even­ing by cast­ing on 300 stitches. It took me 30 minutes. I’m keep­ing a log of how long it takes, just out of curi­ous­ity. I’ve never timed my knit­ting before I’m using a yarn called Grig­nasco Bambi. It is 100% extrafine vir­gin merino wool, in a bright orange.

Well, here’s the start: