Afghan for Nephew's New Baby

One of our nephew's on DH's side of the family had a new baby on July 10th.  Ok, he didn't have the baby, his significant other did, but you probably already figured that out.  By the time I found out when the baby was due, I didn't have much time to come up with a gift.  The first plan I came up with involved using a large piece of children's flannel from my stash, cutting it exactly in half and using half for the front and half for the back.  By doing do, the quilt ended up just the right size for a baby and I had an easy to make gift.

After I got the quilting done on the quilt, I ran across this afghan at the thrift store.  I had a coupon for 30% off, which made the price about $1.50.  Can you believe it?  $1.50!!!  It is in perfect condition and much more appropriate right now for a summer baby.  So I snapped it up and both Dawn and I thoroughly examined it to make sure it was indeed gift worthy.  I ran it through the wash and it's been wrapped and mailed and is on the way to it's recipients.

Here is the full afghan:

 And here's a close-up of the pattern and yarn.  It's really pretty in person.

It is kind of depressing to see items like this end up in a thrift store after someone put so much work into it, but I'm glad I was able to rescue it and hopefully give it to a good home, provided the parents like it and will use it.

Oh, and I had an unplanned break to my work the other day. 

Why, you ask? 

Well, it could have been this that did it:

You could never accuse Echo of not getting comfortable wherever he's at.  I know sooner snapped the picture when he suddenly rolled into the cup full of pens, etc., behind him, which of course tipped over hitting all of the other junk around it on my desk (yes, my desk is very messy right now), and startling him into full awakeness, which of course knocked more things over and off the desk.  He's such a dork sometimes :-).