Buckle Up!

It's going to be a bumpy ride!

This is the start of the crocheted crib blanket using my grandma's pattern which she called, simply, the double afghan. She crocheted thousands of miles of yarn into this pattern during her lifetime. Every night for at least an hour or two, she'd sit in her chair with a pack of L&Ms and a bag of Jay's to keep her company while she worked on blankets for the entire family.

She taught me to crochet. If you can call what I do crocheting, that is. I'm not good at it, and that's not false modesty. My loops are never the same size. My shells lean as if they've all been italicized. This would bother me more if I cared about the craft, but I don't. I'm a knitter. Crochet just happens sometimes. You know, sort of like droughts and plagues and other disasters.

My grandmother passed away almost fifteen years ago, and I'm the only one in the vast clan to know her pattern. All those people -- seriously, at least fifty people in that branch of the family -- and not one of them picked it up from her besides me. That has always mystified me.

In any event, when my uncle found out his wife was pregnant (thanks to some help from a fertility clinic), I immediately resolved to make them a crib blanket in grandma's pattern. She would have done it for them, had she lived long enough to celebrate this miracle with us. And I hate the thought that all the rest of us got one of her blankets, but this baby, this miracle child of her adored youngest son, will never know her or her blankets. I'm a little choked up now thinking about that.

I bought the green yarn right away and used it, with a spare skein of white, to practice the stitch. (It didn't help.) And then I waited to learn the baby's gender. It's a girl!

The pink yarn arrived today, and I picked it up and brought it home. It has taken me almost two hours to work that little bit in the picture -- basically the cast on chain, plus a row of "right side" shells and a row of interwoven pink "worms" which will serve as the base chain for the "wrong side" color.

Trish asked me today how long it would take me to make this blanket. I'm already panicking about the June 1 shower date. And given that it took me two hours to work that pathetic little strip, thanks to my complete inability to count to three, five, or six, I think we're in for a race against the clock.

My mantra for the next fifty days: It will be worth it, it will be worth it, it will be worth it....