Fast forward to this past summer and back at Michael's again looking at more yarn. This time I discovered Bernat Maker Home Decor yarn in woodberry and clay. Again, I was in love with the yarn. This yarn is soft like cotton and a little bit stretchy, I thought it would be perfect for a new pattern I had found, so I bought my yarn and gave it another try.
The pattern I settled on was the Comfy Squares Textured Blanket pattern from Little Monkey's Crochet. It looked easy enough to pull off for a beginner and I had 317 yards of each color so I thought I would have plenty for a simple baby blanket. I used an 8.00 mm hook and the suggested 101 stitches to start my blanket just like in the pattern. Because I only had 2 colors to work with and the pattern shows 5 color blocks using 4 colors I thought i'd switch things up a little and make my blocks of color uneven for some added contrast. I settled on 15 rows of woodberry followed by 20 rows of clay for what was supposed to be a total of 5 rows; 3 small stripes of woodberry and 2 fatter stripes of clay.
I was in love with the way the blanket was coming out. It was soft and a little bit stretchy just like the yarn, and had a lovely looking texture to it. The pattern was so easy to follow, a perfect pattern that requires little though once you get into the swing of things, so great for working on while watching TV.
I had a little trouble in the beginning as you can probably tell by the lack of smoothness on the bottom block of woodberry, but that worked itself out the more I worked on the blanket. One thing I chose not to do was the "finishing row" between each color block. The pattern suggests a special row between each block of color to make the transition look neater, but I don't have any problem with the way my transition from one color to the next looks.
As you may have noticed from the pictures, my blanket does not have 5 stripes. Sadly this is because I ran out of yarn, and because I currently live on an island yarn is hard to come by so my blanket will remain in it's semi-finished state for another 8 months or so. I was so close to finishing my fat stripes, only 2 rows short with the clay, it was a real nail biter working on the end of that second stripe seeing if i'd have enough or not.
Eventually, after I finish this blanket i'd like to make another one using the same pattern and same yarn, only a cream and purple as the colors. I'm also really intrigued by the corner to corner approach for stripes, so maybe i'll make an attempt at that but still using the comfy squares stitch.
