Corner to Corner Baby Blanket

I had some leftover yarn and kept seeing fabulous corner-to-corner blankets being posted over on reddit.com/r/crochet, so I just had to try one for myself! A few tutorials I tried were confusing, but I finally found this tutorial with photos that really helped!

I had a variety of partial skeins to use for this, but in the end I decided I wanted to make it Ingress themed, so I went with a bunch of greens, blues, and whites. Luckily I only chose to make a few color bands, because sewing in all the ends was really frustrating as it was. I later started one where I had a color change every row... let's just say I abandoned that one right quick. The border is just single crochet, and the entire blanket is about 29 inches square.


Be inspired by other projects made with this pattern on Ravelry:



Here's a pic before adding the border with bonus cat paw.

Blue Ripple Afghan

I made this afghan for my friend's wedding. She got married back in July, but it took me a few months to pick a pattern and the yarn I wanted. I finally got some nice yarn on Black Friday, so I started soon after that. I finally finished! It was a simple pattern, and was relatively quick compared to my previous blanket.

The pattern I picked was the Easy Ripple Pattern by SusanB. I used 9 total skeins of Red Heart With Love yarn; 3 skeins each of White, Peacock, and Bluebell. In the end, the blanket measured 56" by 64", and used every last bit of the white, slightly less than 3 skeins each of the blues. I was really worried about running out of white to make the last few rows, and at first wanted to make a border, but since I had just enough white, I decided it looked good enough without a border.

The color pattern I decided to use was 4 rows per light blue block and 8 rows each for the dark blue and white blocks. I wanted to make the blanket simple and not too busy by alternating colors more often. The plus side is that there were fewer threads to weave in at the end!

This picture doesn't capture the colors quite right, but the picture above is more true-to-color.

Right from the beginning I loved how the blanket looked and felt, and I hope my friend enjoys it as much as I do!

Add this project on Ravelry:

Rainbow Brocade Ripple Afghan

I decided I wanted to make a pastel rainbow afghan using the Brocade Ripple pattern from the book Reversible Ripple Afghans by Kim Guzman.

I used Caron Simply Soft yarn, as suggested by the pattern, as well as a J hook to ensure I didn't crochet too tight, as I did in the test squares. In addition to White, the six colors I chose are Blackberry, Soft Pink, Lemonade, Soft Green, Soft Blue, and Lavender Blue. I'm a bit sad that I decided to make the posts in white; the brocade pattern looks much nicer when the posts are the darker color. I couldn't do that with the rainbow colors though, so I had to settle for white.

I wish I could have omitted the Lavender Blue in favor of a light orange, but my local Michael's didn't offer anything other than burns-your-retinas bright orange. I also wish I had chosen a more muted yellow, but again they didn't have anything suitable.

The finished product is approximately 55" across and 72" long. Unfortunately, the couch monster ate several hooks over the course of making this blanket and I inadvertently switched to an I hook so the top of the blanket is more tightly crocheted than the bottom, but it isn't too noticeable.

Overall, I like the colors even though the purple is too dark and the yellow is too bright. I'm disappointed with the look of the white brocade pattern, so hopefully my example will help steer others away from the same mistake (or towards, if you prefer this look!). I much prefer the plain ripple side and honestly I wish I had just done that; it would have taken much less time to finish.

My cat also enjoyed the blanket even while it was still in progress. All she needs is a PopTart and she'd be NyanCat! Also being able to survive the vacuum of space would help.

Vanilla Cream Ripple Afghan

My mom made this afghan for my brother's bed, to match his newly-painted room, which favors the same colors featured in this afghan. She chose Vanilla Cream Ripple as her pattern, from the book Reversible Ripple Afghans by Kim Guzman.
She did modify the pattern a bit to make the front posts thinner.

She used Caron Simply Soft Sunshine, Berry Blue, and Soft Blue with a K hook. She crochets much more tightly than I do, so her blanket turned out thicker (and arguably softer) than mine. The finished size is about 75" x 55".

One curious thing about it is that since all the front posts are parallel, it naturally accordions to just a fraction of its width.

Check out more projects using this pattern on Ravelry:

Post Stitches Afghan

Since I started my 99 Post Stitches project, I wanted to make the squares into two afghans. For the first I collected together all the lighter-weight squares, and the heavier, thicker squares will go into the second afghan.

First I joined the squares into rows, and joined them with slip stitch. I picked a few colors and used those to attach all the squares touching those colors, then did the same for all the remaining colors. I slip stitched the rows together with white yarn, and tried to make the corners of each square line up. Once that was done, I finished the afghan off with a row of white single crochet around the outside for a simple edging.

The front looks very clean, as I only used the back loops for the joins.

I like the white lines on the back, and wonder if I should use white for all the joins on my next afghan, instead of matching colors.

The finished afghan measures 60" by 48" almost perfectly!