Baby Blanket

Hello, Its Sunday again, and I have finished the baby blanket! I started knitting last week for the girl at work thats about to leave to have a baby in 2 weeks! I have knitted this pattern a number of times now, its a very good piece for a beginner as you dont notice so much if you go a bit wrong and you will notice very quickly if you drop a stitch (or gain one) as you are knitting in blocks of 5 and tend to count  your stitches. The end product also looks quite clever but is very simple.

As I said before, I chose to do it in pink, I also made it a bit smaller then the original pattern as I didn't have enough wool to do it full sized.

My blanket measures 49cm by 55cm which should be big enough for a new born :)

The original pattern states to cast on 105 stitches, this blanket started off with 95. I kept going until i had used my 3 50g balls of pink 'Click' aran wool. which I brought a while ago from a cute little shop in Stoud run by 2 old ladies. 

The original pattern.

I hope they are readable, I do need to buy a camera, at the moment I am using my mobile phone.

The pattern is fairly easy as long you are accustomed to 'knit' and 'purl'. You just cast on how ever many stitches you desire (depending how big you want it), lets say 105. (with this pattern you have to work in numbers multiple by 5, you will see why in a minute) and you work 6 rows of seed stitch; which is; one knit, one purl until you get to the end. Then again on the next row, but making sure you are doing the opposite stitch on top. (a knit on top of a purl, and so on) This will give you a sort of lumpy affect to your knitting.

see middle for seed stitch.

after 6 rows of seed stitch you start row 7 with 5 stitches of seed stitch again, then 5 of 'knit' and 5 of 'purl' until you get to 5 stitches from the end of your knitting and the last 5 you do seed stitch again. 

Start row 8 by doing the same but this time making sure (after the 5 seed stitches) to do the same stitch on top. (knit on top of a knit and pearl on top of a pearl) until you have got 5 rows of knit and pearl then you knit on top of the pearl and pearl on top of the knit and then work another block of knit on top. You will start to see the woven affect desired for this blanket.

Carry on this pattern, until you have knitted the blanket to you desired length. (the pattern states 32 inches) Then do the last 6 rows of seed stitch and cast off. 

I took this picture so you get a better idea of scale.

Laura Makes x