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I was invited to a baby shower in a few weeks so I am working on a new baby blanket. I can't make it to the shower, but I hope to have it ready to send with a friend who is attending. Wanna know my annoyance? The parents don't know or aren't sharing the sex of the baby!

Who in heavens name gets annoyed at that? I didn't know the sex of ANY of my kids, and managed just fine. The only reason I am annoyed is that now that I'm on a baby-blanket-making kick, I like to match the fleece to the family and to the gender of the baby to come up with the perfect blanket. Perfect! When I don't know the sex of the baby, I'm left with blah, neutral, boring choices. And I'm not sure if I'm good at determining neutral choices any longer, so I ended up going a different route with this one, and it was messy.

Literally.

I bought some pale green fuzzy stretch fabric, similar to Minky fabric but without the bumps. In fact it may be Minky fabric, I'm not sure. I found a beautiful pale green yarn that matches exactly, and decided to make my first solid blanket in stretchy, fuzzy fabric. At least it's green, which I love, but I gotta say it is a little boring. So I laid out the fabric and cut it with my rotary cutter, unleashing pale green fuzzy snow all over my dining room floor, table and chairs. I made the unfortunate decision to wear black that day, and my clothes were covered too. What a ridiculous mess. I made the very fortunate decision to test my rotary hole cutter on a scrap piece of fabric before I ran it along the borders of the freshly cut blanket. When I pulled the fabric slightly to check the holes, the fabric tore as if perforated. Good to know.

I ended up just poking my crochet hook wherever I needed on the blanket and used a binding stitch to cover the (messy and linty) edges. Then I stopped there and washed the blanket to get rid of some of the fuzz and make sure the crochet could handle the edging task. It seems to be fine. Now I'm just trying to put on a border that looks kind of uni-sex.

See why I'm annoyed?

This friend is the same one that registered for Fiesta Ware when she got married, but the only color she wanted was white. I couldn't bring myself to purchase any because white Fiesta Ware looks just like every other white dish. Where is the Fiesta?

So you can probably tell by now, my curmudgeon status is official, and on course to be upgraded to the next level: old coot.