Baby Fever

When my friend announced back in February that she was pregnant I’ll admit that I didn’t take the news too well. I’d grown tired of losing friends to the altar and the crib and didn’t want to see another one bite the dust.

I’ve got over myself since then and have slowly come to terms with the fact that it’s happening. I don’t particularly like it but it’s happening.

What’s helped is that this friend has been remarkably laid back throughout her pregnancy – too many of my friends have gone in to hibernation as soon as the scan picture has been posted on Facebook – declining invitations to come out, spurring offers to meet for tea, not wanting to be generally sociable which all starts to leave non-pregnant people fearing pregnancy as akin to some kind of disease.

It would appear however that those friends are basically weirdos. This friend has come out on hen dos and taken part in fancy dress (have you ever seen a pregnant Pocahontas? It’s a little disturbing), she has been the last one on the dance floor at weddings wearing her heels and bump has even been exposed to the delights of Take That. I know that isn’t for every pregnant person but I admire my friend for it – she has stayed herself, just with some extra padding, rather than turning into a “pregnant person”. In fact if you turned her around and just looked at her back you could quite happily pretend there’s nothing different about her at all.

I hope that if I’m lucky enough to have children then I’m able to be like this throughout my pregnancy. And I believe that my friend deserves to have a nice present for this well-travelled baby.

Since I’ve caught the rippling bug I decided I would ripple my way to a present but I was stuck for some time when it came to colour choice. They have decided not to find out the sex of the baby and they’re not really pastel/neutral kind of people so I wasn’t really sure where to go.

Then I started to think that I wouldn’t make a blanket at all because the baby’s due in the middle of August. But then I remembered that

a) we live in England and August does not necessarily mean sun. and

b) it’s going to be autumn in a few months (sorry to bring it up) and a blanket might come in handy, and

c) I would like this blanket to be used for many things, it can be thrown down on the garden or thrown over the pram or left in the room for decoration.

When I found out that the nursery has been decorated with a jungle theme I hotfooted it to the Indoor Market in Preston (it’s where all the cool people go you know) and got me some Stylecraft in all kinds of bright colours and then the Jungle Ripple was born.

It’s been called a Rasta Blanket and the Bright Blanket but Jungle Ripple is its official name so far, unless anyone else can come up with any suggestions.

It’s harder to keep the colour choices random than it was for the Yarn Fairy blanket because there are only 5 colours I’m dealing with but I’m hopefully doing ok so far.

Good thing is that babies are small, which means that only small blankets are called for which should theoretically mean that I should be done with this blanket in double quick time. If only everything else didn’t keep getting in the way.