Asymmetrical Granny Square Blanket

Our NC friends, Jody and Sarah, welcomed an absolute cutey of a little baby boy (John) into their family back in early June.  Chris has known Jody since they were gawky teenagers, and Jody and Sarah's wedding was Chris' and my first public date as an 'official' couple!

Though baby-themed stuff is adorable, I wanted John to have something useful for well past his baby-days.  For a while now, I've been drooling over Sara Palacios'  fun designs, but none of my friends were having babies!  With the arrival of John, I was so excited to finally make one of these blankets.  Chris and I choose a pattern quite fitting for a growing boy -- an asymmetrical granny square blanket.

A bouncy wool/alpaca yarn made this blanket soft but long-lasting.  Plus, wool is great for not retaining stinky kid odors.  A lot of people shy away from making wool items, but wool can be washed in the machine's gentle cycle (using Woolite) and just needs to be dried flat -- and wool dries incredibly fast, too!  Here in Sweden, it's actually pretty tough to find acrylic yarns, so I've gotten used to working with wool.  I now actually prefer the way it slides like butter on crochet hooks and knitting needles  :-)

By using a size K crochet hook, I got this blanket to be super-squishy.  Chris and I chose darker colors (royal blue, medium blue, red) that will, hopefully, keep the inevitable grim from a little boy's hands from showing up.  These colors also remind me of baseball!

I'm pretty sure that this blanket will help Jody and Sarah keep John nice-n-toasty during the über harsh NC winter ;-P
Here's hoping that John comes to love this blanket as much as I enjoyed making it for him!