I’m finding I’m enjoying the start of the gray baby blanket. The Rios is silky-soft with a bit of luminousness in the daylight and just that slight bit of heatheriness. It has happily claimed my time ahead.

I found a pattern I really like but I didn’t like how it starts, and it has this weird upward poof at the center. Less so for the author’s, really much so for some who’ve made it.

I thought of various fixes, including crocheting a flat circle and saying the trees are growing out from the world, but the idea of not knowing how it all would really pan out till I’d made an entire blanket–but wait. Actually, the thing that I think really stopped me was that it was a forest scene.

I love it. Someday I’m going to knit it (and get that center right.) But it needs to be the deep green of the woods back East that I grew up in and that is not the color the expectant mom wants.

So I was thumbing through my Barbara Walker stitch treasuries again (every knitter should have the red and blue ones) and a quick dash through a little of Ravelry again–and this time I found it.

And (grabbing a different Treasury) that should be in there, too.

Gauge swatch time.

Math.

Eyeballing.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ve got it, and it’ll tell me more the further I go but I think this one is actually already all planned out, totally unlike last time.

If I told you it’ll have a forest after all would you be surprised?

And it is a go!