A Labour of Love

No, not that kind of 'labour'. New nipper is still tucked up inside and we will be setting off for the hospital at 7am tomorrow morning. By lunch time he should be with us!

No, this labour has been the knitting of a crib blanket:

Each row took approximately 5 minutes to knit and I ended up with around 180 rows (kept knitting till the yarn ran out). Altogether that's about 15 hours though it felt like much longer!

Soule Mama knitted a lovely blanket for her new baby and she mentioned that it was a variation of a 'feather and fan' pattern. So I looked up what this pattern was and it seemed pretty simple so I figured I'd give it a go. There's no actual pattern to follow, rather just a stitch and row repeat (18 stitches repeated over the row with 4 rows making up the pattern with a few extra stitches at the beginning and end of the row to form a border). Another 'winging it' project for me - lol! Here's a close-up, believe me when I say that it's much easier to knit than it looks:

I have some nice cotton yarn but was worried about making a mess of the project and wasting it so decided to use some baby acrylic double knit that I had in my crafty cupboard. I didn't have a clue how many stitches to cast on in order to get a blanket of the right size so I did a trial run of the pattern stitch and row repeat and hazarded a guess. My finished blanket is the perfect size for a moses basket. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and now wish that I'd made it big enough for a cot and out of the cotton after all!

In case anyone's interested here's my 'recipe':

2x 100g balls baby acrylic double knit.

1 pair of size 4.5mm needles (as I wanted it to knit up fairly quickly).

Cast on 116 stitches (6 x 18 for the pattern repeat plus 4 stitches at the beginning and end of each row to form a border).

Knit the first 4 rows to form a border.

Start the pattern repeat:

Row 1: Knit

Row 2: Knit 4, Purl to the last 4 stitches, knit 4.

Row 3: Knit 4, *knit 2 together x three times, yarn forward then knit 1 x six times, knit 2 together x three times*, repeat from * to * to the last 4 stitches, knit 4.

Row 4: Knit.

Do as many 4 row repeats as you like but ending with a row 4 (I did 42 repeats).

Knit the last 4 rows to form a border.

Cast off.

If I was going to do this again I would probably knit 6 or 8 rows for the top and bottom borders, and likewise 6 or 8 stitches at the beginning and end of each row for the side borders.

Pregnancy Update:

Well, tommorrow is the big day and I'm pretty nervous. I'll be away from blogland for a little while I think but will try to pop up a picture of the new arrival. Thank you for all your good wishes, I will be thinking of them all!

A Labour of Love