Res Completa: Blankie for Baby L

When my friend Kelly announced that she and her husband Joe would be having a baby this spring, the first thing I thought (after the initial excitement) was: "What am I going to knit for the little one?!" I've done baby sweaters, socks, pants, hats, a bathrobe, a toy...what else was there in the baby knit genre that I had yet to explore? The answer was: blankies. So right then and there, I knew a blankie it would be for future Baby L.



Pattern: Tender Blankie, by Knit and Tonic
Needles: US 5 circs
Yarn: Kollage Yarns Corntastic, 2.3 skeins of Topaz (the lighter blue), and Takhi Cotton Classic, 1.5 skeins of the darker blue
Start to Finish: December 26, 2008 - January 2, 2009



Mods: I added stripes (6 rows with each color), but left off the ruffle. To account for my smaller gauge (I got 6 sts per inch rather than 5), I cast on 101 stitches for each square. With all the extra yarn I had left over when I was done, I wish I had cast on even more. The blankie ended up being about l7" on each side, which I think will be good for a newborn, and it can turn into a lap blankie once he's bigger.


Kel opening the blankie at her shower (in which I fail to notice the huge, light-filled window behind her, and mistakenly think this will be a great photo).

Notes: This blankie is made of four squares that are then seamed together when you're done. This made for perfect travel knitting, and in fact I finished the whole thing while traveling to and from Argentina after Christmas. I may have been done even sooner, but the blankie had Twilight to compete with...

One thing I either didn't think about or didn't realize when I decided to go for stripes is that garter stitch seams are not invisible. So my choices were to either use one color to seam up the blocks and have it look really ugly and apparent when I was seaming stripes of the wrong color, or I could use two different strands of yarn to seam, one of each color, and then have a little extra bulk along those seams. I chose the latter. Each stripe was seamed with a strand of its own yarn, and the "nonworking" yarn was held to the back then laced through a few stitches before it was used to seam again. I had to be very, very careful not to pull the seaming strands too tight. In the end, I love how it looks from the front, but the seam lines on the wrong side look a little messy. I'm still kind of mad at myself for not seeing this coming...hindsight, 20/20, and all that.

I should also note that I loved both of these yarns. Loved. And how cool is it that the aptly named Corntastic is made of corn fiber??

In other knitting-related news, today I make the trek to Stitches West!! Yarn will be bought, and fellow bloggers will be met. I can't wait.