Autumn leaves baby blanket

A boy-child is born. A craft project is made. Leaves turn gold and fall. Thus my friends, the world turns. My world, anyway.

He is the baby of a dear friend. He is also the unknowing demonstrator of the magic time-shifting properties of crochet. I have no time at the moment, but I also have my ever-present need to make stuff. 

Happily, crochet takes no time. You simply do it whenever you are sitting still. Find yourself watching '30 Rock' at the end of a long day? Half a granny square. Stuck in traffic on the M1? Enough time to make some more, join them together and do the border. Crochet will not only slot in to these otherwise passive activities, it will actually MAKE you time.

Before you know it you will have a blanket for a new baby when you thought you had far too much on to be even considering a craft project. 

They say the act of eating lettuce actually makes you lose weight as it has so few calories. Well, crochet is lettuce.

Anyway.

In all my adventures in crochet, I had never made the classic granny square. The internet is full of instructions for these and they are easy and incredibly satisfying, not to mention beautiful.

I had also never joined-as-you-go. This method appeals as - rather than wait until you have finished and have the task of joining the squares together - it happens as you make the squares, and is border-free.

I went to the oracle Attic24 for instructions, then kind of made it up myself. I enjoyed watching the blanket grow like a puzzle as each new square was added:

The other challenge was keeping everything muted. The boy's parents love grey with a passion. Yes, grey and passion in the same sentence. It's new to me. So I thought I would use two autumn colours and four greys on each square to keep the balance. And my interest. 

 A few autumn colours for the autumn baby. I love to crochet in autumn colours.

I was pleasantly surprised with the result and quite sad to hand it over.

Sleep well little baby. Please.