Pretty Knitting

The holidays are whizzing by in a blur of days out, lazy days in the garden, decorating and a lot of nesting on my part. I'm sure you're not supposed to get the nesting instinct until baby in nearly due but I've got it already. I put it down to the fact that because Little F came so very early I didn't get the chance to nest. I didn't get the chance to do anything. Apart from having his room painted and carpeted nothing else was organised. No pretty baby bits bought or made, no prettifying of the nursery and no knitting of baby blankets.

So with No.2 I'm on a mission. A mission to nest, organise, create and be ready. When my first nephew was born nearly 7 years ago I knitted a patchwork blanket for him and I was determined to do this for at least one of my own children too. The thing is that because my knitting is pretty slow, I had to start early. With Little F I didn't like to do this because being my first one I felt very nervous about making too early in case anything went wrong. Kind of silly really because as it turned out things did go quite wrong even though I hadn't knitted! I did make him these which were started while I was in Hospital having bed rest but they weren't finished until he was about 8 months old!

So this time I started nice and early, just before the summer holidays. I started with cream squares and for a while I wondered if it might just be completely cream. But I decided that was a bit boring and thought about what other colour to put into it. We don't know what we're having this time so it had to be something fairly neutral. While we were in Dorset we visited lovely Shaftesbury and I spied a knitting shop where I hoped I would find inspiration. The lady serving was lovely and very helpful. I explained the situation and she pointed out some lovely mixed colour wool which I have never knitted with before. I was a little apprehensive as to how it would look but I'm really pleased with the result. I chose one that has a mixture of pinks, blues and greens so that hopefully it wouldn't look too biased in one direction. However, I think that despite the blues and greens it is looking fairly girly. What do you think?

I've got about another 15 squares to go I think but I've already started stitching it together as I really wanted to see how it was looking. With another 12 and a half weeks to go I think I should finish well on time even with my rate of knitting!

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