Stars and Moon Baby Blanket

After quite a hiatus, I have FINALLY finished my most recent project! From start to finish, I easily invested 80+ hours into making this blanket and am thrilled with the results.  I will be getting a new “godson” in just a few weeks and wanted something special to welcome him into the world!   

PATTERN:

This is by far the largest knitting project I’ve yet undertaken, and this was also the first time I’ve worked from a grid design. I found the pattern online and thought it looked to be within my skill set. I followed most of it exactly and I think mine looks very similar to the yellow sample.

Pattern can be found at:  http://knittingonthenet.com/patterns/babyafmoonstars.htm

YARN:

For my yarn, I chose this wonderful Italian variety by Berlini. Appropriately, as I will be a dentist in two years’ time, it is called “Smile”. I recently discovered a wonderful website (http://www.numei.com/) where you can order discounted balls of yarn and save even more if you buy in quantities of 10. As this project ended up taking 16 balls total, that was certainly helpful for my wallet! The “Smile” yarn is a 50/50 blend of cotton and acrylic and, most importantly for kid projects, is machine washable! The yarn is sturdy but soft, and is DK weight. The color is called “Amparo Blue” and exactly matches the blue of the elephants on Jacob’s crib bedding. I’m very pleased with my choice! 

ALTERATIONS:

Despite adhering to most all of this pattern, I did make a few changes:

• So that this could be a full sized crib blanket, I chose to add another row of 3 panels from the original design.
• If you compare the original pattern grid with mine above, you'll see I filled in each side of the star with an extra stitch because I thought it looked better.
• When completing the border, I used 5 stitches for each side and 4 stitches + the cast-on or bind-off rows for the top and bottom. If I were to do this blanket again, I would change those 4 stitches to 5 or even 6, as the sides ended up being wider than the top and bottom borders.
• Finally, I added another 2 rows of straight knit or purl at both the top and bottom of each panel, as I thought the moons looked too close together in the original sample.

CHALLENGES:

Overall I thought this was a fairly simple project, albeit very time consuming. Probably my biggest challenge, however, was knitting in two balls of yarn simultaneously (pattern decreed I should knit the entire blanket with“two strands held tog"). This made it very easy for the yarns to get tangled or twisted. I solved this problem holding the strands together with my thumb and first two fingers, but splitting them apart below that, with one strand on either side of my pinky finger. I also flipped my work in progress around after each row to straighten out the two strands. This kept the yarn from twisting up quite well!

Another challenge I faced was working a design from a grid. As I take my knitting bag from class to class and back and forth between school and home, simply covering lines on the grid with a ruler and sliding it along the rows as I worked wasn’t a very viable option. I chose to print out 3 copies of the grid and highlight each row as it was completed. It worked perfectly and was a very portable method   :)

I can’t wait for my new godson, JACOB ELIJAH BALENTINE, to join us in the world next month! I’m praying for a healthy, happy baby and am looking so forward to meeting him in July when I go home to Alabama. Once Jacob is home from the hospital, I will be sure to post a photo!!!

UPDATE: BABY PHOTOS! JACOB IS HERE AND HEALTHY :)