Planned out the blanket. Discovered I was missing one square. Oops.

I learned to crochet pretty much entirely to knit the Babette blanket, which I find beautiful. I had the pattern in my Ravelry queue for years before I actually started it, and my first attempts at granny squares were enough to make the wee baby Jesus weep. I practiced with acrylic until I got to where I thought I needed to be. I thought that my first squares were pretty good, but once I’d finished the two spiral blankets and came back to the Babette, I realized how wrong I was. The squares that had looked great to me were uneven, the row changes were sloppy, and on the whole it didn’t look like anything I’d ever want anybody else to see. Thankfully, I had only done a few real squares, so I didn’t lose much time by going back and undoing those. I shudder to think of how bad my rejected practice squares must have been.

Piecing together one section

Once I was better at crochet, I got going in earnest, and made the approximately million and three  squares in this blanket (okay 126, but who’s counting)? In between, I did crocheted some hats and skulls (many many skulls), which I think further improved my stitches. Even when I went back to crochet the one square that I was somehow missing, I noticed the change in my stitches’ tension, as compared to my efforts back in October.

I’m now finished with all of the individual blocks in the blanket, but am having the worst time figuring out the final configuration, and how to achieve it. I’m not sure how this is going to pan out, because I haven’t really loved any of the available options for putting together this blanket. Whip stitch is ugly, mattress stitch seems like too much work for not a pretty enough payoff, single crochet looks a little ugly, and I’m reluctantly going with slip stitch, but I have yet to be bowled over by how it looks. Plus, because I’m joining blocks of different sizes, the standard wisdom regarding connecting horizontally and then vertically really doesn’t apply here.

Another problem is that I clearly need to block my squares (like, ALL of them), and I really don’t want to. This thing may be hibernating until Jesus comes back.

I really like the way that this Purl Bee Babette came out, and I may have to go back to Purl Soho and look at the blanket, which is usually on display in the shop.