Ah, so nice to be back on-line. After thinking that we were about to lose our broadband provider and finding that this was not the case, two local masts went down on Friday and it has taken 4 days to sort them out. That's four days of thinking "oh, I'll just look that up on the inter... BLAST!", 4 days of blog posts to read and 4 days of not knowing exactly what my bank balance is (rather ctirical at the moment).
But now we seem to be back up and running (fervently touching wood and crossing all digits), so I can show you last week's telly crochet and this week's hospital crochet.
We got a list from the hospital telling us what to take with us and it includes 2 cellular blankets, so I decided to make a Stash Avalanche version.
(We were even graced by some rare sunshine for semi-decent photographs today!)
It's the same ripple pattern as the striped blanket I made in Sidar Flirt last year. The yarn is some 4ply mercerised cotton that I got from Lidl a few years ago - it's actually very similar to Rowan's Sienna, perhaps a tad bit thicker.
I toyed with the idea of a dark blue border but decided against it, so really it's just a basic square of ripple with no bells or whistles.
Having made it, I realised that it is probably not a suitable substitute for a 'proper' cellular blanket, especially for swaddling (too thick, me thinks) but it's a good basic blanket to add to the collection and I think it will last better than the Sidar one (I say this because I saw some tops knitted with Flirt at the Dublin Knitting and Stitch Show last year and the beautiful sheen had really gone out of the yarn, which I put down to washing. It was pretty disappointing actually because I love that yarn and had at least one pattern lined up to knit).
I was also toying with how to make a cat net last week. Much as Mrs Grey Cat is part of the Stash Family, we are not too keen on her using Baby Avalanche as a hot water bottle, especially as new borns can't push a cat off themselves and are likely to suffocate.
Because we don't have a lot of space (that should probably read as "too much stuff") and are planning to move, we decided to buy a basic crib initially rather than a ginormous cot. However these are just as inviting to a snoozy cat so we needed something to keep the baby out of harm's way.
It seems that you can get cat nets for cots, and cat nets for prams but nothing to fit a crib (Mothercare, please note: you can make money by selling accessories which go with cribs too, you know). I also read several review which said that the dense meshes that are generally sold as cat nets are so dense that a cat can actually sleep on them (like a hammock presumably!), and that didn't strike me as too good an idea either. So I decided to make one.
My first idea was to use Solomon's Knot but I quickly came to the conclusion that I didn't have enough yarn. So I thought about it over the weekend and decided to invent something along the lines of a filet crochet mesh (you can find a good little summary of basic filet meshes here).
It turned out to be a good idea, especially as yesterday's routine ante-natal appointment with the GP resulted in me spending 5 hours at the maternity hospital because my blood pressure was up (so they needed to rule out pre-eclampsia) and she (the GP) couldn't feel the baby's head in my pelvis anymore and wanted to rule out a breach presentation.
It turned out pretty simple. Multiples of 4 chains plus 3 to turn. One row of half trebles to establish a firm (-ish) edge and then sucessive rows in triple treble every 4th chain (and starting the next row with 8 chains then first tr tr into 4th chain). Well, to be pefectly honest the first row of squares was done in double treble but I decided the result wasn't square enough.
So while I was strapped to a fetal heart rate monitor and waited for test results and a doctor, I meshed away.
Baby Stash's head is still in the right place, you'll be glad to hear, and so far, pre-eclampsia doesn't seem likely either but because the hospital has to be doubly sure that I'm just very pregnant and there isn't something dodgy about to kick off, I get to spend another 5 hours meshing (and getting far too hot - they really need to turn the heating down in there!) there tomorrow (er, yipee?). So it shoulnd't take long to finish and be ready to be tied onto the crib in anticipation of Baby Avalanche's arrival.
Happy Wednesday!
