A Bluestocking Knits

This, at last, is the "Basic Blanket" from Simple Crochet for Cherished Babies by Jane Davis, which I have to say, was an utter pain most of the time I spent on it, but is very pretty now that it's finished and draped artfully over the arm of a sofa.  I had searched for blanket or afghan patterns that called for 10 balls of Jaeger Baby Merino and would be fairly quick to make, and this seemed to fit the bill perfectly, but ten balls were not enough by at least one, and I spent quite a lot of time having to figure out not only the instructions themselves but how to arrange it so that I could get as much of the pattern worked with almost every inch of the ten balls I had.

Strangely, although my gauge came out noticeably larger than given in the book, with the same weight yarn and my usual 1-size-smaller hook, the finished measurement of the panel was smaller than given.  How can that be?

There really should be a more-clear photo of what this blanket is supposed to look like when laid flat. I suppose that this —

— which is the photo from the book, is clear enough once you've already made the thing, but before I got to that point, I heartily wished to see it more fully.  (What does the seam look like? for example …)

I found out early on from reviews on Amazon that a lot of people have had difficulties with a number of patterns in this book, so perhaps I'm a bit more salty than I would have been if I thought it was just me.  I suppose I can figure out that if the instructions say "weave in end after row 11" that I'm supposed to break off the yarn at that point, or that if it says "sew the panels together" that I'm supposed to make a second panel, but it doesn't say so at all.  But I was mystified by the instruction "Work row 8 along the top and bottom edges of the blanket" — it's multi-directional, so which edges are the top and bottom?!

This edging, by the way, is simply begging for a chart, but I am not at that stage yet, myself.  (Laura herself came in not long after I'd hidden the blanket-in-progress but not my attempt at a chart.  "What's this?" she asked, "some weird code??")

After trying to puzzle out the directions, then trying to figure out from the photo what was meant in the directions, I came up with these alternate instructions for certain rows, with my choices and some clarifications in boldface. Note that in the main body of the panel, the initial ch3 does not count as a stitch — you are making loops in which to anchor the edging.  (This, if I remember correctly, is not what the general instructions say at the beginning of the book.)  The initial ch3 in the border, however, does count as a stitch.  I also did 1 less ch than specified at the beginning of each row, as mine tend to be a bit looser than average, I guess, so that one less ch made my edges a bit straighter than they would have been —

• Row 3: Ch3, 1 DC, [ch1, sk 2, DC, ch1, sk 2, 3 DC in next st] 32 times (on the last rep, 2 DC at very end) [129 sts].
• Row 4: Ch3, DC, [(DC, ch1, DC) all in next st, 2 DC in next st, sk 3, 2 DC in next st] 32 times, (DC, ch1, DC) in top of ch3.  Note that the "sk 3" will be above a DC in the row below.
• Row 5: Ch3, 2 DC in 1st st, [DC in sp of sk3 section, 6 DC in ch1 sp] 32 times, 3 DC in top of ch3. Note that the 6-DC cluster will be above the 3-DC cluster in the row below.
• Row 6: Ch3, sk1, 1 HDC, 1 DC, sk1, [2 DC, 2 HDC, 2 DC, sk1] 32 times, 2 DC, 1 HDC in top of ch3.  Note that each bracketed section will be centered over the 6-DC cluster of the row below.
• Row 7: STDC, DC in 1st st, DC, sk1, (2 DC, sk1) 64 times, 3 DC (the last in top of ch3).

As I said, I did not have nearly enough wool to do the four rows of DC mesh at the top of each edging section (which is worked four times!), so in frustration, I just worked the mesh on each side until the wool ran out, estimated how many rows total I could get, which ended up being about a quarter of what was called for, and then ripped out the ones that had gone past that.  In the end, I decided that, really, an open section of mesh down the middle makes a rather drafty afghan, and so I would work the edging only through Row 7 on one side of each of the two panels, stitch those two together, and then work as much of the mesh as I had yarn on the two "outside" borders. 

It also seemed to me — and perhaps I'm mistaken, not having that much experience with crochet — that having a mattress-stitched seam running through a quite-pretty lacy panel might look just a bit clunky, and so, remembering some particularly clever methods I'd come across for joining crochet squares and used myself with tolerable success, I decided to do one of those instead of a mattress-stitched seam.  (I used the fourth one from the top, the one with the sort of "telegraph pole" look to it).  I thought this suited the pattern quite well, actually, and would recommend it to anyone making this blanket, certainly if not using the full complement of mesh rows down the middle.  (I ended up, by the way, after joining the two panels after their respective 7th rows, getting a grand total of two rows of mesh on the two outside edges, four altogether, far less than the sixteen the pattern called for with ten balls of Baby Merino, even subtracting maybe two of those which got used up in my join.  Oof.)

But — as I said — it turned out very pretty, and I'm also quite happy with the color, which was Jaeger Baby Merino 233 Lilac overdyed with 1 package of grape Kool-Aid per ball.  Interesting that it came out mottled even though I did not try to get it so.  It looks very different in different lights, as you can see!

(Yes, that is my HST quilt, finished and on the bed!)

I decided that both because I was quite unsure if the amount of wool that I have would make it all of the way through the "Modern Classic Baby Blanket" and that the mottled over-dye distracted from the lovely stitch pattern anyway, and that, to be honest, being still a novice crocheter there were times when I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do — I would set that pattern aside and go for a more sure thing.  I searched online for patterns specifically using Jaeger Baby Merino DK, and came up with the "Basic Blanket" from Simple Crochet for Cherished Babies by Jane Davis, which, wonder of wonders, is held by my public library and was on the shelf at that very moment. 

The construction is a bit strange, and not quite clear since there is only one photo of the finished blanket in the book and it's scrunched and folded over on itself, and the instructions never say "make a second panel" but I think this is how it goes: you work the DC panel, turn that on its side and work the edging, then break the yarn and work the edging on the other side, and then make a second panel in the same way and sew them together up the middle.

You can't quite see them in my photo, but there are three safety pins where I joined in new balls of yarn — the first about a third of the way up the main panel, the second almost two-thirds up, and the third a row or two into the edging (near where the crochet hook is at the moment).  That is, yes, four balls of yarn so far, with six more rows of the first border section and all eleven rows on the second still to go — and I have ten balls altogether.  Rather naïvely, I suppose, I did not make a gauge swatch, since I'm using the same yarn and a one-size-smaller hook, but it turns out that my gauge is much bigger than the one in the pattern, so I suppose that's at least part of the issue.  Regardless, though, I don't think ten balls of yarn is enough as it stands now, and so I need to figure out how much smaller I must make the blanket in order to use as much of the yarn as possible.

I do rather like the overdye with this pattern, though — it's not quite as "busy" as the Modern Classic blanket (which, again, I think would be wonderful in a solid yarn, and I will keep it in mind as a potential future project).  It might be also that this one has a bit more "space" in the twiddly part, more lacy-ness, as it were —