Never ending baby blanket

One of my friends was going to have a baby and she wanted it to be a surprise, so she wanted general items. This is rather hard to do now days. It seems the world is content to deal with boy or girl and nothing inbetween. Since I am a lover of all things thrift I went to the ARC stores and got her about 10 items that would be great for a boy or girl. I wanted to add a little something personal to the gifts, so I started knitting a baby blanket.

Now I started knitting about a year ago and I have done mostly scarves for myself and one for a friend (which I believe I posted on here). I recently tried a jacket for my new cousin Liam and it turned out pretty well, but it took me 6 months because I'm still new at it. This blanket has taken me WAY longer and its only about half way finished! I wasn't able to give it to her at the shower, so I had planned to give it to her when they baby was born, which has already happened. (She had a little girl.) SO my NEW plan is to give it to them at Christmas. (Christ almighty it better be done by then!)

Now at the time I started this no one knew what she was having, so I picked what I thought was a very general stripe yarn. I thought it would be good for a boy and still fit a girl. Ironically now that I look at it I think it fits a girl more, but hey who cares cause she had one! (thank you!)

I have already gone through one ball of yarn and about half way through the second one. I have a third in my knitting bag, so I seriously hope that is all I need. Originally when I started this I thought I would only need two (not a good thought on my part), but I went with smaller needles so I screwed myself a little there. The yarn I picked is still available at several stores, but the dye lot is not the same, so the ball I'm on now is the wrong dye lot. I figure if its in the middle it will look more like I planned it to be a slightly different shade. The bottom and top part are the same dye lot, so I should be ok to make it work out.

(you can see Stue lying next to me ready to attach any stray yarn... which I oh so love... NOT)

The first ball made great stripes, but the second one seems to be making misplaced stripes. I must have done it differently when I started the first one, but I honestly don't remember doing anything special. At this point I will chalk it up to it being the middle section and it just gets to be a bit odd. I will have to work harder on the last one to make it be more striped again.



I work on it for about 30 minutes to an hour each morning before work. Some nights I work on it to help me relax and sleep. On my days off I still work on it in the morning, but thats about it. I tend to work on other projects, as I currently have several going. I love how I do that to myself. Silly me!