Pink Blanket

Finally, finally, finally the dreaded pink blanket is completed. I'm telling you, it was the loooooongest project. I would work on it for hours and make almost no progress at all. It was like knitting into a black hole. I appreciate Jennifer and Elan's suggestions on the border, but I didn't think I could get the border from the Alphabet Blanket done in just a week, and don't feel comfortable at all with crochet (where DO you poke the hook through???), so just did the plain old picot border. That took longer than I thought it would, but I was working on 1,208 stitches around the freakin' huge blanket. Yes, I counted. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

This is one of the test borders - it is the Alphabet Blanket border from Debbie Bliss' Baby Knits book. I saw this blanket on Jennifer's Blog, and it is so cute I had to order the book. The yarn I used for the pink blanket was just too thin. The blanket in the book called for something closer to a sport weight, I think, and I had used fingering weight. The border came out all floppy and droopy. Plus, no way could I have finished it in a week.

Here is a close-up of the picot border. It is 6 rows in stockinette, 1 row of knit 2 tog, yarn over, and then 7 more rows of stockinette. For the corners I increased 2 stitches at each corner every other row, and then did corresponding decreases after the k2tog row. I picked up stitches from the blanket & used the three-needle bind off to finish it off.

I couldn't get a picture of the whole thing, so here it is folded up on the sofa cushion, ready to go. Hip Hip, Hooray!!!

Time to celebrate, now. What am I going to do? I don't know, but it won't involve anything pink!

An update on Mellie: She has been doing pretty good. She decided she doesn't care for chicken nuggets any more, and ground beef is not so much to her liking. Shaved beef (like for cheese steaks) is OK, but now and then she'll just take some scrambled eggs, if you please. I feel bad about all of the food that we are wasting trying to get her to eat, but what can you do.... Just keep cooking things in the hope that something tempts her, I guess. She is generally happy and has her frisky moments when she sees a bird or squirrel, and she's not in any pain, so we're just doing what we can to keep her that way. Thanks, everybody, for sending good wishes and healing thoughts her way.