I Made a Rug!

I've been thinking about this project for months, and I finally took a day to sit down and make it. Back in the spring, my DH painted our bathroom and redid the flooring. It turned out great! But the wall color didn't look so hot with our Texas flag shower curtain, which truthfully, after 8 years, I was getting tired of anyway.

I bought a new shower curtain with soothing stripes in aqua, blue, and purple. I love the way it looked with the soft blue walls. It brightened up the whole room! Then I realized why I loved the colors of the stripes so much -- I had a collection of yarn in the same colors!

So then I decided to crochet a striped rug for the bathroom. To make it nice and thick and durable, I used three strands held together of Lion Brand Cotton-Ease yarn and a size P hook. The great thing about this technique is that your project will work up quickly (once your hands get used to holding this much yarn!). Then I chose three of the colors and combined them for the border.

Our bathroom is kind of long, so I'm thinking of making a second rug. Just gotta find a day to sit down and crochet it!

Baby Boy Blanket

I confess: I'm a bit of a yarn snob. Not in the "I only use $15 a skein yarn" way, but more like the yarn I use must feel soft. I admit that I avoid anything labelled "acrylic." Usually.

Then I found Cotton Ease by Lion Brand Yarn. It's made of 50% cotton and 50% acrylic, and it feels thick and luxurious, almost velvety. It has the softness of cotton with the durability of acrylic, and I thought it would be perfect for the custom order baby boy blanket a friend of mine requested.

My friend's sister-in-law is expecting her first baby soon, and my friend asked me to make a blanket for a baby shower gift. She left the colors and design up to me. So I hit the Lion Brand Yarn website for inspiration and found a super-cute pattern that I just fell in love with. (Note: you may have to sign into the LYB website to see the pattern.) The only problem was the girly colors they used, but I soon fixed that!

I chose these 6 colors:

From left to right and top to bottom: seaspray, almond, lime, maize, lake, and violet.

I started working the pattern, which is a simple ripple design with double-crochets. After using just the first three colors (seaspray, almond, and lime), I decided these were sweet for a baby boy.

But I was curious about how the rest of the colors would look together, so I made a swatch that included the dark purple and denim blue (violet and lake). I love the way these five colors look together. They are perfect for an older boy. DS3 liked it too, so I promised him his own blanket.

Then I added the gold (maize) to the mix. I'm not sure the gold adds much to the boyish blues. I think I will save it for another project, probably mixing it with purple and reds and browns for an autumn look.

And here's the finished baby blanket:

I just repeated the stripe pattern using seaspray, almond, and lime, and ended with seaspray. Another choice could be to alternate the almond color between the seaspray and lime. (That would "lighten" up the design.) I also made it longer and wider than the pattern called for because I like to think the child will use this for many years to come.