For those that don’t know, I LOVE to crochet. I learned how to crochet when I was around 10 years old – the first thing I made was a baby blanket for my “baby” cousin…who is now in COLLEGE. What. I was so proud of that blanket. About 5 years ago I saw it again in person, and oh my gosh, it was soooo bad. Lopsided and lumpy and way too small. But she still had it!

Guys…ACTUAL footage of me crocheting said blanket:

 

The Lord only knows where that picture came from. But anyway since then I’ve made baby blankets for just about everyone that I knew who was having a baby. I coordinated with the nursery theme, favorite sports teams, you name it. Loved doing it. And THEN…I had my own kids! And my poor friends who have had babies since then – well, let’s just say they have not yet received a blanket from me.

So when I found out I was pregnant I felt like I had to plan the most epic baby blanket ever – I mean it was my turn! So I planned this “graphgan” of a brown walking bear silhouette on a green background. I started it before I had my son, and I finished it when he was around 6 months old. Time management, guys. Just one more fun challenge of having kids. Amiright?

I’ve since learned of this super cool website called Stitchboard.com, which actually takes a picture/design and crunches out a pattern for you. For free. AMAZING. When I designed my bear blanket I was not aware of this miracle. So I used Microsoft Excel (yes, Excel). After swatching my single crochet (the stitch I planned to use) for size, I resized each Excel cell to 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch (this was the size of my single crochet). Then I used the fancy color fill option to “color in” a walking bear silhouette. I still can’t believe I drew a decent bear this way, but I was pleased with it! It maybe could have used a tail though.

 

And so began hours and hours of counting stitches – and unravelling and counting again bc I have a terrible attention span! (Next time I will use stitch markers, for real. Especially since I love to binge watch Big Bang Theory while I work!) For this project I carried the green yarn when I switched to brown, but I dropped the brown when I switched to green. I’d suggest either carrying or dropping consistently, as my bear is a little thicker than the rest of the blanket, and that wasn’t my intent (maybe it could be a cool texture thing, but it wasn’t what I wanted!).

My finished project actually does look like a bear! Go me! I secretly want to redo it and not carry the yarn and maybe make it bigger, but I also have plans for a temperature blanket for both my kiddos and zero time to do any of this in 🙂

And man, if I thought I didn’t have time to make this blanket, running around pregnant after a 1 year old and working full time while my husband was deployed…yeah no epic blanket plans were made for my poor girl! I still have this vision in my head of a brown tree silhouette on a purple background…maybe it will be her 10th birthday present. Idk. Maybe college graduation. In the meantime they can share.

Check out my other patterns such as my granny square baby blanket, Santa hat, and harlequin stitch blanket, as well as my Etsy and Ravelry shops.

This post may contain affiliate links to products I use and love.

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