Portland Vacation ~ Part 1

I visited Portland, Oregon, in August. I was invited by a friend, Merry, over a year ago and she had reminded me about the invitation more recently. I have never been there before now and it a beautiful place. There are snow-capped mountains; rivers; seemingly hundreds of waterfalls; amazing azure lakes; wide sandy beaches; and flowers, fresh fruit and forests everywhere we went.

Merry had a ton of things planned for us to do and see and it couldn't have been a more fun-packed trip. She is the ultimate hostess, for sure. Here's a little taste...

Baby Blanket #2

Yes, I've been very neglectful of this blog. However, I have been sewing and knitting and traveling a little and getting a kitten and training for a marathon. I just haven't posted about any of it!

So, I've decided that I need to give myself a mini goal: to post at least twice a week. I'm pretty sure I can manage that.

One of the projects I completed - quite a while ago now - was this baby blanket. It is for Emma. She's not born yet; but her mother is a woman I work with. Emma is due in late November and I thought I had plenty of time to knit this, but someone in our office decided to throw a baby shower last month. I worked constantly to try to finish it but didn't make the day of the party. But, I did finish it about a week later.

The pattern is supposed to take one 16oz ball, but I still had several rows of pattern and the border to do when I ran out and had to buy a second ball.

As you can see by the close-up it's a really simple pattern - garter stitch, seed stitch and stocking stitch - worked on size 8 US / 5mm UK needles.

Emma's parents loved it and were thrilled that this was the first homemade item they had received.