Well lookee here, I finished a knitting project. That hasn’t happened in a while. This particular item, a baby blanket, was supposed to be a welcome to the world gift for my friend Harmony’s son. I got a bit of a late start on it, not casting on until the month he was due to be born, but I can’t quite explain how it is that I didn’t finish until eleven months later. Ah well, it became an early first birthday present. I used the same pattern from Cindratee that I’d done for Annabel’s blanket a couple years back. (The pattern file doesn’t appear to be in the same place as it was, but I bet if you e-mailed Cindratee she’d help you out; she’s a nice lady.) This time, I made some of the circles two colors, which appealed to the scrap quilter in me who thinks more variety is always better. I used a bunch of different shades of KnitPicks Swish washable wool, some of which were new and some of which I had on hand from earlier projects. I did make a colored chart of the whole blanket before I started to try and get the hues and values balanced, but as usual, I changed things as I went along and introduced that oh so important element of randomosity.

I unfortunately hadn’t kept good notes about how I did the border on the other blanket, but I did remember that the first time I tried it, the corners were very goofy because I did too much increasing, so on this one, after consulting a couple books, I increased one stitch before the corner and one stitch after only on right side rows. (I used the knit in front and in back increase; maybe next time I’ll experiment with a different one.) I chose the color for the first border by looking at which colors I hadn’t used in any of the backgrounds of the circles on the outside round of blocks in the center; thank goodness there was one after all the changes I’d made to the colors as I worked. On the other blanket, I maintained the garter stitch pattern all the way around, but on this one, I switched it up and did a knit stitch in the corner stitch on every row, so there’s a diagonal line of them shooting out from the body of the quilt. Looking at it laid out flat, I think perhaps I picked up a few too many stitches for the border, especially on the long sides, but when the blanket’s being used, no one’s going to notice that. Harmony posted some adorable pictures of Jasper and his blanket and he seems not at all concerned by any slight waviness in the border.