Bamboo Baby Blanket Bobble Border

So sorry if I'm beginning to be a bore with the bamboo baby blanket boondoggle posts. It's just that most of my attention has been on this and I don't dare change the subject in my mind for fear of distracting myself from this project which I began the week after Xmas for a baby two weeks from delivery to whom I hoped to deliver it before he turned 2 months. That was March 7.

The title of the post with its over the top alliteration reflects my own edgy relationship to these afghan edging posts and the project itself. Trying to say the title aloud has me about to burst into giggles or baby babble. Which reflects how my mind feels like its about to fall off the edge of something.

Hey, do you see those white jacketed guys coming around the corner there? I think they're hiding something behind their backs. Something white and floppy with funny belts and buckles.

So in last night's post I related how I'd practiced three possible fringe substitutes for the one I gave up on on Sunday and discovered I was going to need to crochet on an edge first or the fringe wouldn't lay right. And I had chosen to use the bobble stitch for the edge as I liked how it filled the stretched out stitches where the defunct fringe had been removed. I had finished the edge on that side and liked it so well by itself I fiddled with the idea of not adding a fringe after all. I said I was going to sleep on it.

Well when I woke up and got it out and took a closer look I discovered the edge wasn't laying flat. It was bunched in places and stretched into an arc in others. And many of the spaces were not filled by the bobble stitch. But I still loved the stitch and in the short sections where it did lay flat and the stretched out space was filled, it looked very good.

I eventually diagnosed the problem as a combination of poor tension control on the thread, having chosen to use three instead of four double crochet in each bobble and having in random instances added a chain between the bobbles that didn't belong there, and having chosen to close the bobble tops always from the front which made the bobbles all pop out on one side.

So I began the morning by pulling out the whole side and starting over. I worked much slower, taking care to address each of the issues and trying to catch as mush of each tail form the row work as possible in my stitches as I went so I would have less tucking and trimming later. As you can see in the picture, I haven't yet finished the first side again.

But I am still pleased with it overall and have decided definitively to deep six the fringe.




So, I need to finish the last several inches on this side and trim the Irish Flags aka the ends of the tails refusing to stay caught in the stitches. (Ed calls them Irish Flags and I'm not sure what the provenance of that slang term is. I guess I need to Google it?)

Next step is to tie each pair of row tails in a knot on the other side then crochet on the bobble border and trim the Irish Flags.

Then I will need to wash it. Possibly by hand. Block it and let it dry. And finally, prep it for the mail.

I'm really hoping now that it will be on its way before the post office closes Monday.

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Arrrrrgh. This project is constantly finding new ways to frustrate and waylay me. Now it's enlisted Blogger in those efforts. Auto save has failed and so has posting which is keeping me from closing this tab and moving on. To maybe stream a movie or watch a DVD while I crochet.