My baby's blanket

A couple of months ago, I learned how to knit. One of my pregnant friends said that she wanted to make a baby blanket and to me that sounded like a great idea. I've tried sewing and didn't really like it to much, so why not give something new a try. One night, my friend invited me to her house to learn from one of her other friends. I was in my first trimester of pregnancy, had just worked a 9 hour day and was completely fatigued. Somehow I was able to pick it up. I was taught how to start, and two basic stitches. There I was with my beginning knitting needles and my cheap yarn that I found in my house, practicing sewing so that I could eventually make a blanket. In about a week I learned how to identify which stitch was made by which position the needles were placed and that if I switched it there would be a whole different pattern. I learned not to overstitch the first stitch and also how to fix a stitch if I did it wrong. Progressively, you could see my improvement on my little square of yarn. After about 3 weeks I decided that I was ready to make this baby blanket.

My friend and I went to the store and purchased the softest yarn we could find and some much bigger knitting needles. I decided to make mine white because at the time we were watching a show called Once Upon A Time and one of the main characters had a beautiful white baby blanket. It was going to be perfect. I had already messed up countless times on my practice yarn so I would not make any mistakes on this. After all this was for my baby.

If you have ever knitted before (or crocheted) you know that usually you would use a pattern. We didn't. I went off of the words of those around me. Upon starting, I was confused how a baby blanket would come out of using such a short needle. My friend told me to pack the yarn on tighter than I had previously in my practice. In order to make sure my blanket was the perfect length, I packed it on so tight that it was almost impossible to knit. I had to leave the line unfinished (keeping the previously done stitches on both needles) so that the stitches wouldn't fall off. After going through almost 81 yards of yarn I felt like I was in trouble and that I wouldn't be able to continue because it was too hard to knit with it being so tight. At this point I felt like I should start over, so I took off the stitches that I had done and they stretched across a whole love seat couch. It was more like a queen sized bed blanket instead of a baby blanket.



My mistake helped me learn the appropriate number of loops to make in order to make my baby blanket the size that I wanted. That day my friend and I started over and determined that 75 would be a good number. That was about a third of what i previously had done.

When I started making my blanket, my friend told me that I needed to make a border of 10 stitches. I was confused and thought.. how will I make a border on all four sides. I decided not to do this on my first trial because it seemed too complicated. When you make the border however it helps your yarn lay flat instead of rolling. I started again and decided to do the border. This was after i learned that the border was only intended for the two longest sides of the blanket. Everything was going great until I realized that I had messed up a few of the stitches. In order to make the border look straight and nice you have to count to 10 stitches on each side. Somehow on some of them I had miscounted and I did not like how it looked. I decided to start again. Third time's a charm right. This was my longest trial so far. My borders looked excellent, my stitches looked great except for a few random spots, I had learned to add more yarn to it from a different ball of yarn, and even how to finish it off. I hadn't bothered to look up a video on how to get rid of the loose strings coming off of the parts where I added a new yarn ball so instead I tied them tight and cut them off. I then used a match and burned the ends so it wouldn't unravel. This left three little balls that were brown. I said, well, the nursery is going to be Winnie the Pooh so I will buy some appliques to put over those spots and everything will be great. I finished off the blanket and looked at my end result. It was disappointing. I could easily see my mistakes and it was rolling on the sides even though I had done the border. I couldn't iron the sides (well I could, but it wasn't working). On top of all that it was not as long as I had wanted it to be.



My friend told me that in order for the border not to roll I would have to do the same stitch on both sides. This was my mistake that made my blanket not lay flat. As you can see from the picture there are a couple of spots that also didn't lay perfectly because of the spots I had burned. Now that I had made a bunch of mistakes my final decision was to either make a new blanket taking all I had learned into account or start over with the old one. I went with the latter. All I have to do is buy some extra yarn to make it longer, which will be way cheaper than making a new one and it will end up better in the end. I slowly unraveled everything that I had spent months putting together. It was sad, but I thought about it and said, I have learned a great deal and this time it should be a lot easier because of the mistakes that I made previously.

I don't exactly know how my blanket will turn out. I'm sure it won't be perfect, but through my mistakes I have learned that it can be better and than I personally can do something to make it that way.

Apply this to life. I don't know how many of you learn from mistakes. That seems to be the theme of my life. I've always been a rebellious soul that doesn't like to be told what to do. Some of the choices I made in my teen years led me down a path that left me broken, dark and I felt like nothing could get any better. Then I fixed myself. I changed. Now I'm happily married to someone I probably wouldn't have dated because he treats me well and has my same standards in high school, I'm going to be a mother, I have met thousands of people from all over the world, I have a degree and am working on getting a certificate to be able to work more intensively with children with disabilities and so much more. Am I saying that life is going to be easy when you change? Nope. You will still have trials. The one thing I learned is that I would rather go through trials with the love and peace that Christ brings me instead of alone and by myself. I know who I am. I know where I have the potential to go. I know where I came from. I know that I am never alone. If you have ever questioned these things in your life, please share it with me. I would be more than happy to share what has given my hope in tomorrow with you.