FO: Anna's baby blanket

I had hoped to have $5 in San Fransisco finished by today, but that hasn't happened as I got distracted by a new project! More on that on Sunday. Meanwhile, the first of two baby blankets for the pregnant ladies in my team at work is off the hook and almost ready to go.

I couldn't find a shade of mint green yarn that went with the yellow and peach when I went shopping with my friend last weekend, so we compromised on a creamy yellow which is paler than the yellow I've used for the centre.

I think it still works, although the overall effect does render the blanket slightly closer to the "girl" end of the spectrum rather than gender neutral (as we don't know what this baby is going to be, although as Anna is convinced she's having a girl, hopefully it will work out for the best!).

I say almost ready to go, because I haven't woven the ends in yet, and plan to give it a wash and a quick spin in the tumble dryer to soften it up before I give it to her. We've got three more weeks till she goes off on her maternity leave though, so plenty of time to get that all done.

The pattern is the Lacy Round Ripple Blanket by Heather Tucker. Once you get past the centre section, it's a really simple logical pattern from then on in. I stopped after 36 rounds as I felt my blanket was big enough (mine is about 36" across, point to point), as written it stops after 47 rounds, which would have added an extra 12" to the diameter of my blanket and made it enormous. It's a pretty quick pattern to whip up, should you need an emergency gift, but it does get a bit dull.

I used three different DK weight acrylic yarns. The yellow centre is James C Brett Top Value DK, the final ball in a pack of ten I was given by my mother-in-law several years ago. That yarn certainly did me proud for baby gifts! Three blankets, two pillows and a baby hat! I used almost an entire ball for this blanket.

The peach stripe is Stylecraft Special DK in apricot, which I bought to make Rosie Rabbit for our niece when she was born two years ago. I used up my partial ball, about 65g in total.

The final stripe is Hayfield Bonus DK in cream. 86g was the final tally on that one, and I still have one ball spare as I bought two just in case! Luckily, there are other babies to knit/crochet for so I plan to use that for one of the other babies due to arrive soon.

This blanket also has the honour of being my first actual finish in this year's Year of Projects!