New crochet project

I have started a Thing!  I am hoping that a couple of long-haul flights will lick it into shape (or, more accurately, length).  It's Cotton Ripple Blanket no. 3 for impending niece/nephew person.  I'm using Lucy's Neat Ripple Pattern for the third time and yet again it's going like a breeze.

No, it's not out-of-focus bacon.

Here we see just more than a single pattern repeat measuring in at about 8", so there's a fair bit to go, but this is crocheting up a bit faster than the original Cotton Ripple Blanket, which was double-size to this one's cot/twin-size.  I think the section up there took about 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon and a few hours here and there on a 24-hour roundtrip road trip.  There has been another Sunday afternoon since I took this picture so I think I've achieved nearly a foot of blanket.

I hope I have enough cotton left...

Update:

Blanket was, in fact finished in time (posting on the day she was born counts as on time, non?) but in my enthusiasm I didn't take any further pictures.  I also doubt there was anything sufficiently interesting going on to warrant any of my family taking action shots, but plenty of folk did admire it while it was in progress.

Dolphin Hunting II & III

This evening we went and found our friendly neighbourhood dolphins.  It took us a 2.2-mile hunt (and the first one really was a hunt,confounded us for ages) but we managed to visit our two nearest dolphins.

This is Tree's a Crowd.  Squiggle the Squirrel came with us and is not part of the Wild Dolphin trail.

We thought we had covered the whole park - tennis centre, playpark, crumbling pavillion and ponds, but to no avail.  We were just going to move on to Park 2 when eventually we found it under the trees - fading light (as much as we get that at this latitude this time of the year) meant that it was actually really tricky to see until you could make out the concrete base.  Fortified by our success,we continued...

Smug face at managing to locate Archie

 ...and spotted our next dolphin with relative ease, at one of top three likely locations.

Bonus peek-a-boo shot.