Last year my best friend from high school had a baby. I wanted to make something nice for her, specially bearing in mind I wasn't going to be able to be there to welcome her into the world any time soon... so a baby blanket, another first for me, sounded like a good idea.

I started working on it after a Crochet Ripples class by Joanne Scrace. Her class gave me all the intuitive knowledge I needed to understand a ripples pattern on my own. I chose a pattern I thought would be both nice and achievable.  

The pattern is called Ripple Shells Blanket, designed by Lisa Naskrent, the pattern appeared on Crochet Magazine, in the May 2009 issue. The yarn I chose for the endeavour was some synthetic soft yarn that I boughtat Michaels in the US during one of my work trips. It seemed appropriate because it was soft and the colours were baby friendly, and also because it was super-wash yarn, which is always good for baby items. After working through the pattern this was the result:

Baby Blanket before blocking

I washed it and blocked it to make sure that it didn't look all curly and unfinished. Joanne had explained to me that an item is not finished until you have actually washed it (I never thought of it before, to be honest). The rule applies to everything except amigurumi. This is how I blocked it after throwing it to the washing machine:

And this was the end result, a much better looking blanket than when I came out of my hook:

The mum and the baby liked it very much :)