Until my youngest son mentioned it to me in the late afternoon yesterday, I had forgotten that he needed an orange beard.

Last Thursday, we had agreed to work on it together, but the days slipped away quickly, and suddenly there were no more tomorrows left for us to put it off onto.

So we didn’t.

Using Melissa Campbell’s pattern basic guide to Dwarven and Viking yarn beards (available free at Ravelry), I got to work on the crochet armature while my son got to work cutting the necessary number and lengths of yarn.

With an occasional misstep (but nothing insurmountable) we had his ready-to-wear beard done in about two hours time, and I even managed to get this photo of it in morning light:

With all of the beard requests now fulfilled, I was able to turn once again to the crochet cookie baby blanket that I have been working on.

Unlike the first version for which I used Red Heart Super Saver light raspberry for the main color, this time I am using the more gender neutral and currently quite popular color of light gray.

I was inspired by two things.

One, this long ago and yet-to-be finished project of a sheet of crochet cookies:

and two, I have a good amount of Red Heart Super Saver light gray left over from this project:

As I again turned my attention to the cookies for the baby blanket, I also took the time to write the directions as I go.

I was slowed a bit by my near-constant revision of the Girl Scout Lemonade inspired cookie. As can be seen in this photos taken shortly before sunset, I still have not made a definitive decision on which way to go with this cookie:

and while I still have one more thing I want to try with the Lemonade inspired crochet cookie. My hope is that by this time next week, both the pattern and the blanket will be done.

Related post: Rhapsody in gray