blue baby blanket

My friend is expecting a little boy at the end of January and she's not having the easiest time of it so I thought I'd surprise her with a crocheted blanket for him and crochet as much love as possible into it so he'll be a lovely happy peaceful baby! Cos that's how it works, right?
I've been looking forward to starting this blanket for months. This last payday just gone I finally treated myself to the wool for it - I've got 7 shades of blue!!!! I decided to make a granny squares blanket as I enjoyed making them so much last time and it's sort of traditional crochet but the blue shades should make it a bit more contemporary. The mum-to-be isn't exactly the mumsy, crochety type, tbh! So I want the blanket to be really nice and not look too arts-n-craft-y or homemade.
My first real plan, after much hmming and hahing, was to make a squillion different granny squares; there are soooo many different patterns out there. I figured that way I could practice lots of different crochet as well, I was a bit worried that granny squares would get a bit repetitive and I want to challenge myself - I can make a basic granny square already.
See, now, reading this back I can already see there's starting to be too much riding on this poor little blanket - but I couldn't see that until just now.
So.
Wool arrived and for the first time I allowed myself to head off into the interwebsphere to look for pattern ideas.
I found a crochet-a-long with about 100 granny square patterns. "Great," thinks I, "I'll just work my way through them, I won't need the whole hundred for a little baby blanket, after all."
At this stage I did have a couple of niggles: 
1 - a lot of the granny squares are: a) flowery - it's a blanket for an un-mumsy mum and her baby BOY so hmmmm... & b) 3-dimensional, not great for a baby blanket, no?
2 - what about TENSION? (my favourite thing in the whole world) I really didn't want to end up with a bunch of different-sized squares that I couldn't fit together.
I dealt with (2) by deciding to join the grannys as I went, although I wasn't massively confident that it's a robust way to join squares together for a blanket to wrap a wriggly baby in (if his behaviour in the womb is anything to go by, this baby is gonna wriggle!)

I began.

I played with different hook sizes

3mm

3.5mm

And decided to go with the 3.5mm, mostly because it's a much nicer hook to work with.

I made my first granny - a plain old granny square. It's lovely, all softy poffs and nice. I haven't got a picture of it so you'll have to take my word for it.

I made the second square from the CAL. It's supposed to have a heart shape in the middle of it, I hmm'd and haah'd a bit about the heart (see above about un-mumsiness) and eventually decided to give it a go. 

Awful. The heart looked cute as a (heart-shaped) button until I attached the square around it, which pulled it out of shape, so it looks like a lumpy butterfly.

Bother.

Unpicking it wasn't worthwhile as I'd already fastened off all the rounds. So I decided not to attach it but to keep it as a backup and see if I fell in love with it later on (or got more desperate!) 

Square #3 was a sunburst with puff-stitches - worked really well and came out the same size as the first one, albeit with 1 round fewer, so I joined it on the final round.

I have a strip of two joined squares - woop!

Square #4 is a sorta hexagon thing with a flower attached to it which I decided to do without the flower (see above, etc., etc.). I must've read the pattern wrong because it's all bunchy. AND it was the same size as the other 2 squares and I hadn't attached it yet - damn!

By this point I'm starting to feel slightly despondent about the whole deal. Plus, having to have the webpage open all the time and keep checking instructions, although formative, isn't exactly relaxing.

Rethink.

I want a really good quality blanket that looks proper professional like. I want to make it with minimal stress. 

I hereby abandon the plan to make a squillion different squares.

Which is good, except now I need a new plan.

Ho hum.

Trawled t'internet. Couldn't make a decision.

Popular options:
(here's my pinterest board, if you're pinterested)

One Giant Granny
comme ça:

Hexagons
e.g.

....

Eventually I hit upon this square pattern,

which I think is cute and, best of all, nice and solid. I've abandoned plans to join as I go, having been inspired and reassured by Little Tin Bird and Attic 24 (my crochet heroines, as always) that slip-stitching together at the end will be unchallenging and give a nice professional, robust finish to the blanket. 

Let's see how long this plan lasts, eh?

It's ok to start a project and then rethink it and start again, isn't it? 

I think I'm going to call it A Creative Process, it makes me feel better anyway!

-x-

PS I stumbled upon this tutorial from Little Tin Bird, which shows how to weave ends in to a square which is a lot like the square I've chosen to do - yaaaaaaay! That's another niggle put to bed, Little Tin Bird, you are my shining crochet star!

PPS my ravelry entry for this project is here.

ta-ta!

-x-

PPPS yes, yes, I know the square I've ended up choosing isn't really a granny square. But it ticks so many other boxes I hope you'll forgive me ... 

-x-