My Fertility Blanket

I was looking at the pictures of the prefolds in the last post, and I realized that I got a bit of my Bavarian blanket in the top left corner of the picture. I haven't posted about crocheting much, but it is a skill I learned from my mom when I was young, and it was a passion before knitting, before sewing, and before baby.  I've made hats, full-sized blankets, baby blankets, and have more than a few half-finished projects lurking around.

But THIS particular blanket is special. 

This is Bavarian Crochet.  Its a stitch sequence that takes a long long time, and there is not much gain on each row. But the finished project is beautiful, and in my opinion, well worth it.

When I started this blanket, I knew without a doubt that it was going to be a baby blanket.  The colours, the little diamond pattern, everything about it said "baby".  And with the amount of time and effort I was putting into it, I knew it wasn't going to anyone but me. I have seen too many handmade crochet baby blankets, hundreds of hours of work, for sale at Value Village, for less than $5. That wasn't going to happen to this one.

So for most of last spring and summer, if Taz drove the car, I was in the passenger seat, crocheting.  Mornings when I woke up first, I would have a quiet half hour to myself to work on it, while he breathed quietly beside me, still deep asleep. 

I used a lot (and I mean a LOT) of the time to daydream about what our future looked like.  How many kids? What would they look like?  What would it feel like to hold our child in my arms?  Sometimes we would talk about it together, imagine where we would end up, and joke about the traits our children might inherit, but most of the time, it was just me and my thoughts.  And most of those thoughts were about babies.  About how this blanket would one day be wrapped around a baby of my very own. How it would be half me, and half the love of my life.  I poured countless hours of love into that blanket, never knowing exactly when I would be using it. 

And just like the blanket and I willed it to be so, with less than a row to go, I got pregnant.  It is henceforth, and will forever be known as my very own fertility blanket.