Baby surprise jacket, cap, and simple blankie

My mum is here, visiting for a couple of months. And when mum or mum-in-law are visiting, somehow, my knitting and crocheting activity peaks up. Has to be one of the best friendly things in the world, just sitting in the sun with a hot cup of tea and coffee and making new things. 

So a good friend's baby shower brought out this joint effort. It is the very first time I have made the EZ's Baby Surprise Jacket. Actually, I did not make it, I "instructed" my mum, reading out the EZ instructions, and mum made it. And she did the cap. 

Like so many of her generation, my mum does not knit from written instructions - and while I marvel at the amount of knitting knowledge my mum, grandma, and mum-in-law simply carry in their heads and execute it at the right time, they instead marvel at all those wonders that exist in the knitting world, that they never knew about because they never "read" knitting. Like this Baby Surprise Jacket for instance - my mum was just completely bowled over by the construction of it, and she was anticipating the outcome like a little child while she was making it, and chuckling like a little child by the end of it! 

The blanket - well that's another story. Sometime last year, I had these two balls of Paton's Baby yarn, a very baby yellow, with no complete project coming out of it. So, mum-in-law (who was visiting then), sat and did these yellow squares, and we hoped that someday it would turn into something. And so, last week, I got some white, and turned it into a baby blanket, all ready for the new baby to arrive. Work is super busy right now, so this has to be the quickest bit of crochet I have ever done, trying to find odd bits of time to joining a square here and a square there (there was a time deadline, the baby shower invite). And yes, I did follow EZ's instructions and had it hanging around the kitchen, and even with my Mac on the train! (I can sometimes produce code and woolly things together, funny the two processes actually help each other). 

So, this gift had the fortune of having three knitters on it, me, my mum, and my mum-in-law, a true family project, a super welcome for a super new baby.