Hey folks! I’m celebrating today as I’ve finished a thing!!! I’ve completed a whole baby blanket for one of my lovely friends who is expecting a second baby boy later this month.

I do like to make my friends a baby blanket if I can, and I adore seeing their little ones wrapped up in something I’ve made them – it’s a guaranteed way to make me smile. But then I love to see children either wrapped in or dressed in handmade things full stop don’t you? 

So here’s the finished blanket I made – what do you think? I love how this blanket turned out, my husband calls it the superhero blanket because it’s got that cool zig zag flash design running through it!

The pattern is the ZZ Block blanket by fellow blogger Rosina (aka Zeens and Roger) and when she posted this design on Instagram back in October last year it was a serendipitous moment – I knew it was going to be the perfect blanket to make for my colour loving friend!

My friend comes from Zimbabwe and she’s an avid lover of all bright colours and the bold graphic c2c design by Rosina just seemed to fit what she’d like perfectly.

I don’t know if you’ve seen Rosina’s original blanket but it features the zig zag in yellow, turquoise, blue, magenta and pink on a grey background. 

© Zeens and Roger 2018

I really loved the colours she used and the grey contrast but I personally really wanted to see what that zig zag looked like in a rainbow! Plus I’d found the perfect set of bright little baby tops that I knew would fit perfectly with my rainbow theme – especially if I could colour match!

As I’m trying to be good, where buying yarn is concerned, I went stash diving and found some of the Paintbox Yarns Simply Aran yarn I had left over from making my zig zag zing cushion (free pattern from LoveCrochet available here) and I had enough Paintbox yarn to complete the rainbow colours. I did have to buy a bit more grey – but I figured as I was using up some of my stash then it was still good to do that! The Paintbox  colours I finally ended up using (in case you want to know were):

• Granite Grey (206)
• Rose Red (213)
• Mandarin Orange (217)
• Buttercup Yellow (222)
• Neon Green (210)
• Marine Blue (233)

In the pattern notes it suggests that if using a 4.5mm hook and aran (worsted) weight yarn (which I planned to) that the blanket would be 80 x 110cm / 32 x 43 inches. This was going to be a bit big for the amount of yarn I had so I fiddled a bit with the initial pattern a bit to reduce it slightly. It’s still the pattern in a nutshell, just smaller as I was careful to keep the integrity of the design feature that I loved. I didn’t actually measure the finished blanket (I forgot!) before I gifted it but it ended up what I would say was just the right size for a baby blanket / lap blanket.

I was so pleased with the end result of this blanket and mum to be loved it too – especially because of all the bright colours which I knew she would!

If you like this blanket the chart (it’s not a written pattern) is available for purchase from the Zeens and Roger Ravelry store where there’s also a link to a video with extra C2C help if you need it.

Sometimes it’s nice to go non-traditional for a baby blanket isn’t it as the end results can be really fun! Do you like to go non traditional or would you usually make something for a baby in more traditional pastels perhaps? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Until next time; keep calm and crochet on my friends xx