Whale, look at this, Knitting and Card making!

A wonderful young woman is expecting her first child in March. Today was her baby shower. Her nursery colors are white, turquoise and gray with whales as the theme. I wanted to knit a baby blanket with whales, but I didn't want to do color work with strands of yarn floating across the back that might catch little fingers and toes.

I searched Ravelry for whale images and found this site, Down Cloverlaine  The link takes you directly to the whale that I used, but check her sidebar for all the wonderful designs she shares at no cost.

I used Encore yarn by Plymouth because it is easy to launder. My finished project was 42" long by 33" wide. I used  just over one skein of gray (garter stitch),  a little less than one skein of the dark turquoise (pattern adapted from chart), and just under three full skeins of white. The first photo shows the full blanket on top of a beige coverlet. I had steamed it and let it dry overnight.

 The colors are more accurate in the photo below

 Close-ups of the whales

The card that accompanied the afghan has a gray mat, water cut freehand with marker added to the back wave,  a white background embossed by using Stampin' Up's Decorative Dots, and a whale stamped from Stamps of Life's Whale2Stamp.