FO: Lovely Lady Blanket

So I finally am getting around to sharing the blanket I sent to my friend Rachel this month. Her baby girl was born last week and I already got an adorable picture of her tiny little girl with this blanket covering her on her way home. I love pictures like that.

I used to be a baby blanket knitting fool – that was before I found my love of sweaters. Baby blankets are just wide scarves and can get boring pretty quickly so it was nice that I had a break last year from my friends all having babies around the same time. Of course this little lady is the second of 5 babies I know of that are being born this year (I met the first this weekend and whipped up an adorable sweater for her when my blanket knitting skills failed me). I’ve got a couple more blankets, cardigans and other projects in mind for the little people coming soon or who have already arrived and I thought I’d share how I came up with this pattern for Lady Leah’s Love Blanket.

Since Leah was going to be born in February I knew I wanted to do something with hearts but I also knew her Mom wasn’t that into pink and super girly stuff. She told me she liked lavender and grey and I decided no matter what I made it was going to have to be a bulky or super bulky weight because I waited until the last minute to knit this one up. I decided on Bernat Softee Chunky, a super bulky weight yarn that is light, machine washable and dryer safe AND when you wash it, it becomes so insanely soft. A perfect combo for a newborn blanket. {I should also note that they have a Bernat Softee Chunky Baby that is just chunky weight and NOT super bulky. I realized I had so many issues with the blanket I was trying to knit last week because one ball was super bulky and the other was bulky. You’ve got to pay attention to those labels!}  I thought it would be fun to do a colorblocked obmre effect  with the palette and I pulled the heart pattern chart from the Cupid Cardigan I made for Maddie, although I could’ve just pulled the same heart pattern from my Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book but I was being a little lazy.

I only cast on 60 stitches and gave myself a garter stitch border to make it a bit more polished looking. The hearts were just a block of 26 stitches in the center of the blanket and I knit this up on size 13’s. This one came together fairly quickly and it made it to Rachel before the baby was born – HOORAY! Although the post office took a good 8 days to deliver a 2 day priority mail package (Booo). But it made it and it’s found a good home in little Leah’s crib and that’s what really matters.

Have a good weekend everyone!