Labor of Love

My cousin Shauna is having her first baby next month (a girl!) and I wanted to knit something fabulous for them. I wanted to use my favorite yarn of the moment, Lion Brand Nature's Choice Organic Cotton in Strawberry (not-too-light baby pink) and Walnut (rich chocolaty brown) stripes. I started out on a 36" size 10 needle, because that's the size I use for my hats that I knit with the same yarn. And I started with same-sized stripes. Well, first I ditched the stripe pattern and went for a 4-inch pink stripe and a 2-inch brown stripe. Then I decided that I wanted to use a smaller needle, so I switched to size 8. Finally, I settled on a 3-inch pink and 1.5-inch brown stripe pattern (or something like that, I kind of forgot to measure - I just counted rows, which were 14 pink and 6 brown). I had cast on 190 stitches, which was about 42" (it was almost square before washing; after the wash and dry it took on a more rectangular shape).

Well, by this time I had about two and a half weeks until the baby shower, so I really had to knit like crazy. And I really did, in the mornings, after work and on the weekends you could find me in my rocking chair knitting away. I finished at 2 am on Friday night (or Saturday morning, to get technical), then woke up at 8 on Saturday (the day of the shower) to finish weaving in the countless loose ends (dang stripes!) and to throw it in the wash. And with no time to spare, I took some photos and kissed it goodbye and wrapped it up. The final product: a super soft, machine washable (and dryable!) handmade, one-of-a-kind baby blankie. Shauna loved it, and I hope the baby will too.