Everything's been cancelled. All my kid's activities, sports, (we already homeschool, so school's not cancelled!!), and even CHURCH is cancelled. I have a leadership role in my local congregation so all my meetings have been cancelled. ALL of this means I had a lot of extra crocheting time.
I have a few ladies I know who are having babies in the coming months. I wasn't planning on making anything for them, but now that I have all this extra time, I decided to find a pattern to make something small and simple for them.
Enter this lovely pattern by Celeste Young:
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/rainbow-ripple-baby-blanket
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However, since I didn't want to leave the house, I had to make this using yarn in my stash. I had an idea... what if I used Mandala yarn by Lion Brand?!!
I started work on the blanket and felt like it was going to take forever. At least, if I were to JUST use the Mandala yarn by itself.... So I had an idea... WHAT IF I added a solid color strand of Caron Simply Soft and crochet the two strands together?! This way it would add bulkiness and make the pattern work up quicker.
I've done this before for several patterns. However, round patterns can be tricky because there is a lot of math involved. Sometimes the designer didn't' have a larger scale in mind, and the yarn just would warp, or not lay flat. So I was nervous to start over and maybe have it not work out.
But BOY WAS I WRONG. Not only did it work, but it worked AMAZINGLY. I loved how it was turning out that I accidentally finished the skein (and blanket) that night. Oops!
Materials used:
2 skeins Caron Simply Soft - White
1 skein Mandala Yarn (Pixie is what I used, but you can use any color combo.
J hook (6.00mm) for stiffer blanket, K (6.50mm) hook for looser blanket
Gauge:
Using the J hook, the blanket turned out 35" across from point to point. Using the K hook, the blanket turned out 36" across from point to point.
Crochet the pattern as written by Celeste, only using the two strands held together. Here's the link to the pattern again. You will absolutely LOVE the way it turned out. You will run out of the white one time, and just add the second strand of yarn and keep going. The self-striping yarn makes a beautiful design without having to cut and attach new strands every few rows.
It's beautiful!! I hope you do make one using my two-strand technique!
