Picking the right pattern

I found a dinky little wool shop on my travels around the village near where I work. They only sell one brand of yarn, so I wasn't too hopeful at finding much that I liked - but I just need to see a sign for a wool shop and it's like catnip, I can't resist!

James C Brett isn't a brand I am overly familiar with, I tend to stick to what I know. Not because I don't want to try new things but I tend to buy from my local shop or order online so I have got used to my Rico, Stylecraft and Sirdar yarns. This little wool shop stocks James C Brett cotton-on and it is so lovely! Very soft and the colours are delicious.

I picked four colours, with no specific plan as to what I would make with them and I think just choosing four was VERY restrained of me.

I got home on Friday and was trying to come up with something to make. A very good friend of mine is expecting another grandchild soon and it will be a girl. These colours just screamed baby girl to me so I settled on making a babies blanket for her. I have wanted to design my own blanket for a while now, I have lots and lots of ideas and my head was buzzing with all the possibilities but which one to pick? The two best things with this yarn are the colours and it's softness, picking any pattern that is too complicated or intricate may well take away from the gorgeousness of the colours and I didn't want to do that. Similarly using the right stitch would be very important as anything too dense or bobbly would stop it being so lovely and soft.

So despite my yearning to design my own blanket (and I really do want to) I took the philosophy of sometimes less is more and hooked up the foundation row for a simple, soft and pretty granny stripe.

Using trebles this way, in clusters with gaps means that the yarn keeps it's softness - there are no tight knotty bits in the fabric that's made. I will edge it with a girly frill of some sort and I might add a row of little squares to the top and bottom as I did with my big granny stripe blanket. 

In fact I would love to make a full sized blanket with this yarn, it would be very luxurious indeed.  That may be a project for next year as I am already feeling behind on my Christmas crochet (eek!). Best get cracking with this!

xxx