Off to a Good Start

I've actually managed to finish more in January than I thought I would.  I'm posting my February post early to show off these goodies because I'm really hoping the baby makes an appearance this week!
Speaking of baby - my first finished project of the year is a baby blanket.  It's the OpArt baby blanket from knitty.com.  I used the recomended dk yarn from knitpicks and did the 4 skein version.  It took me a while to finish, but came out great.  Sometimes the easy patterns (this is all garter stitch with increases in the same place each round) take the longest because I get bored.  I started out joining the yarn in different colors by just dropping and then attaching the new color.  Since I hate weaving in ends I decided to Russian join about 1/2 way through.  It turned out ok, but the ends really poke out on the Knit Picks Swish.  If I use this yarn again I won't be doing a Russian join.

My crochet project for the month was a Coming Home Poncho for myself.  I finished it yesterday.  This is a pretty popular pattern based on the poncho that Martha Stewart wore when she was released from prison.  It's also a free pattern that can be found on the Lion Brand website.  I also used the recommended yarn for this pattern, Lion Brand Homespun.  Wow, two projects with recommended yarn - I've become a follower :o)  I used 3.5 skeins for this, and didn't do all of the border rows.  I was afraid I'd run out of yarn so stopped after the second row.  I like how it turned out and it's pretty cozy.  It's working great as a cover-up at work!

Finally I decided to do one more round of the ongoing ATC swap on craftster.org while I still could.  This round I only signed up for two people because I didn't want to risk not sending to someone on time.  The two themes I picked were glitter and steampunk.  I tried using acrylic paint on the steampunk card.  I actually like how these turned out and my sign up for more ATC swapping after the baby and I have a routine that allows crafting.  For the steamship it's not glittered, it's a sparkly paper that I thought would be fun.