Blankie

I haven't blogged about this in a while, but my little nephew is scheduled to make his appearance in mid-July. I have to admit, the whole thing still seems surreal to me. My baby brother is going to be a daddy. Don't get me wrong, he'll be fabulous. But he'll always be my baby brother.

I will definitely be making this baby some clothing, but since he's arriving in the middle of the summer I thought I'd start out with a blanket. I figure you can't have too many blankies.

They've decided not to go too heavy on a theme for the room. They're using a couple pieces from this collection, but mostly it will be solids, stripes and prints rather than lots and lots of animals.

So, I decided to use several solid shades to coordinate with the look.

Next up was the pattern. Barbara has been blogging about her tesselating fish afghan for a while now. The pattern caught my eye immediately. I think I remember a pattern like this from my childhood, but quilted instead of knitted. Anyway, I love the fishies but after seeing the jungle-themed animals that will be in the room I decided to wait for another baby to make the fishies.

After pouring through lots of other blanket books I went with the Entrelac Throw from Baby Blankets Two. There were several that I liked in the book, but I went with this one because I love the construction style. I wanted blocks of color, and the entrelac method will let me avoid lots of block-sewing (which you know I'd be doing late at night right before the shower).

I've just started but I'm really happy with it so far.

   

Even though you have a lot less sewing to do you still have TONS of ends to weave in. I've made a promise to myself to weave in all the ends each time I finish a round (the ends at the tips will be done next round because I think it's easier to weave them in when there's another diamond connected). Diana mentioned a while back that she tries to do this on her projects and it really stuck. There's nothing worse than finishing a project and sitting down for a several-hour yarn weaving session.

Lining -- The back doesn't look too bad but I'm leaning toward doing a lining right now. I'll wait and see how it feels when I'm done. All those pointy edges will make for lots of effort if I do choose to line it.

Oh, the yarn -- it's Cashsoft DK and Cashsoft Baby DK. I'm using five colors:

• creamy white baby DK #801
• light blue DK #503
• tan baby DK #804
• greenish-blue baby DK #805
• olive DK #516

The blanket in the book is made of CottonEase so the gauge is pretty different. If I make as many squares as what is in the book, I think the blanket will be just over 30 inches square. That seems a little small to me, but since it's Entrelac I'll just knit another row if it is.