Is That How Big You're Making It?*

After months of working on it on and off, the waffle-y baby blanket is finally finished!

This yarn will never photograph accurately -- it's purple, not red!

I didn't really have a pattern for this; I just did some garter stitch borders around a waffle-like ribbing and knit until it looked big enough. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy, one of my favorite hand-dyed superwash yarns. I'd had two skeins of it buried in my stash from a couple of years ago, when I bought them intending to make a sweater for Rainbow that never materialized. I bought a third skein to supplement them but only ended using about half of it, so I'll figure out something to do with the leftovers. I'd originally intended to make it a little longer, but I got bored with it, in all honesty. I took advantage of the tendency of superwash to stretch when wet to make it a little larger when I blocked it, so it now measures about 23" by 33".

The recipient of this blanket is due in December and will be the second son of my best friend's older sister. The family has been very close to us for my entire life -- they're the family we spend Christmas with every year -- so obviously they are very deserving of handknits. You might say that this blanket is a bit of a cop out when you consider that the first baby got the intarsia blanket, but a new baby with an older sibling gets hand-me-downs, right? He'll be getting a sweater and probably a hat to go along with this present, so he should be good and covered in wool.


* The title of this post is courtesy of a comment I got from another customer at my LYS this past weekend when she asked what I was making and I told her it was a baby blanket. We're still not sure if she expected it to be bigger or smaller than it was.