FO Friday

It's been a while since I had a finished object to share on a Friday, but I've got a big one today. It shouldn't be a surprise, but with lace, it's always a rather dramatic transformation, even if blocking isn't really extreme. Here's what the baby blanket looked like before (with ruler for scale):

And here it is after it was stretched, pinned, and aggressively steamed:

I could have really stretched the fabric more than I did, but because this is a blanket and not a shawl, I only did it enough to make the lace open up and lie more or less flat.

Here are the details:

For the pattern, I used this free shawl pattern (Ravelry link) but converted it to make it a square. If you have knit enough top-down triangle shawls, this is a pretty straightforward process. You start with a circular cast-on and eight stitches and then knit the pattern twice per round. The main difference is that you omit the border stitches and add a second "spine" stitch after the second and fourth repeats -- in essence, you have one "triangle" that is repeated four times per round.

The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn, but obviously I wanted something heavier for a blanket. I used Caron Blossom Cakes, a 61% cotton/39% acrylic blend. This is one of those yarns made with a knit tube into which fiber is then blown, though I don't know if one component is cotton and the other acrylic or if both are a blend. I used a full skein and about a third of another, and I did encounter two knots in the first skein (and I have already spotted one in the second). Knots are a pain, but considering that each skein is 8 oz./227 g and 481 yds./440 m, I suppose it's not unexpected.

I used US 8/5.0 mm needles, though I could have used even larger ones; I didn't want the holes in the lace to be too big.

This blanket will now be wrapped up and sent to my college roommate, who had a surprise second daughter this summer (well, I assume it wasn't a surprise to her, but I didn't know about the baby until after she was born).

There appears to be a bit of a baby boom going on in my world right now, so I whipped up another quick gift the past couple of evenings:

This is the Berry Baby Hat (Ravelry link), a pattern I have made many times before, including for Molly when she was a newborn. A woman in my office is expecting her first baby this fall and the office is throwing her a baby shower, so naturally I felt I had to knit a little something. I used two of the semisolid Fibernymph Dye Works DK colors I ordered a couple of weeks ago -- Warm Honey and Light Silver Green -- to make this more of a squash hat. I used a whopping 71 yards of yarn! I will likely make another one, slightly larger, for our neighbors' new baby.

We have a fairly quiet weekend ahead, with our only plans being celebrating the Mister's birthday on Sunday. I'm hoping to get some more reading and crafting done, and I'm hoping for some promised rain! I hope you have a wonderful couple of days, whatever you have planned.