This baby blanket was made for my friend and middle school classmate/roommate, Jessica. She will give birth to her first child this month (though I am not sure about the exact day).
For every stitch I crocheted, my memory lingered around my middle school days in China. There were twenty girls in our class. Together with eight other girls, Jessica and I also shared a big dormitory room that could accommodate six bunk beds (we attended a boarding school). We studied, ate, played and slept all together, and we became really close friends. In summer nights, the girls clustered to one bed and whispered, gossiped about other girls and boys, shared secrets, and dreamed about our future.
Maybe none of us at that time realized how our future was like.
Eight years passed by so quickly since I left middle school and came to Canada. In these eight years, many of my classmates left hometown, to Hong Kong, Canada, UK, or USA. Jessica immigrated to USA a few years ago. She met her husband in Los Angeles and finally settled down there. Her husband is also from our hometown, and the most magical part is that her father in law was my father’s boss three decades ago. The world is quite small.
The blanket will be shipped tomorrow. I hope her baby will like it.
Pattern: My own
Yarn: 6 balls of Lanett baby wool
Hook: 3.25mm (I love the cheep Red Heart Crochet Hooks from Wal-Mart. They fit my hand quite well and give great speeds. With a 5mm Red Heart aluminum crochet hook, I did 78 double crochet stitches in three minutes in a competition and won three baskets of yarns five years ago. But too bad most of them are acrylic yarns, for making... afghans.)
On Canada Day, I sewed a Kimono...
At an exact 1:4 scale, using a Scale Ruler. Surprisingly, it fits my mannequin. So I dressed him, in a Chinese way. Ｉ ｓｈｏｕｌｄ ｍａｋｅ ａｎ Ｏｂｉ ｓｏｍｅｔｉｍｅ！
One thing that I am not sure about is ... the dangling part of the kimono sleeves, as well as the underarms, were unclosed (according to my understanding of the Japanese instruction book).
Although it's a scaled version. I did followed the instructions maticuliously (given that I didn't understand Japanese, I spent quite a long time to figure out the illustartions). If you go to Wikipedia and search Kimono, you would see that my scaled kimono has everything except the over-collar, which was too thick for me to sew over the narrow inner-collar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimono
That's the way Japanese hem the kimono.
This is the book I used. I got it from a store called Little Kyoto (or Little Tokyo) from Kensington Market two years ago. 
Very nice illustrations! I can tell that the Author is very experienced becasue her illustrations make sense, even for me. On the other hand, you can tell that I am a visual learner.
