After getting some news from Kate, I realized that some of the old Lake Forest friends are going to need baby afghans this summer. Yay! I was looking for an excuse! (Oh, did you guess that?) Even better, that meant a yarn shopping trip was required. (You guessed that, too? You must be a knitter!) I have a lovely stash of sock yarn and worsted, but not much in between. Although you can make baby afghans out of worsted, I prefer sport or baby weight, especially for summer babies who aren't going to need a heavy blanket right away.

However, I got so excited that I started one afghan right away from some worsted my mom had in her stash. A washable synthetic that has a good, soft feel. The pattern I used was my favorite shell stitch crotchet pattern which I learned from my grandma as a kid. It's fun to make, and that's really the one I had a hankering to do even before Kate gave me the news. I had two colors of yarn, white and that light, minty green they use for baby stuff a lot. Finding out the sex of your baby in advance seems to be "out" at Lake Forest this year, so I'm sticking to the gender-neutral colors. Anyway, I alternated a row of white shells with a row of green shells, and that ends up looking like a checkerboard. I like it! It was a pain to have to deal with the yarn ends at both ends of every single row, but about a third of the way through the afghan I worked out how to work them in as I went along, so all I had to do was cut off the long tails afterwards. That much finishing I could deal with.

I'm not going to post a picture just in case one of the recipients happens to unearth this blog. Highly unlikely, I know, but stranger things have happened!

Tonight it's on to afghan #2. 2 and 3 are for a pair of twins. A trip to Michael's turned up some decent washable synthetic sport weight baby yarn in lilac and leaf green, on sale (bonus!). Now that I've gotten the crotchet shells out of my system, these will turn into two knitted afghans using the same pattern in different colors. The pattern has these arrow-head shaped lacy bits running up the afghan in rows. It looks very pretty in the picture.

Afghan #1 was helped out by the fact that I've been staying up far past my bedtime to watch the Olympics. I have to stop that. I think I'm addicted to the ice skating.