Mon 2 Feb 2004
Completed: January, 2004
Lion Brand Yarn / Homespun
98% Acrylic, 2% Polyester / Color: No. 315 – Tudor [3 skeins]
Needles: 10.5
Garter stitch w/YO border
When one of our knitting circle members, Deb, announced she was pregnant, I knew I wanted to try knitting a little something for her new baby.
Deb is one of those extraordinary knitters, whose stitches look perfect and whose yarns and patterns are just dreamy. She knits really beautiful things, and… well… let’s face it: I was too intimidated to try experimenting with a challenging pattern beyond my current abilities. Still, I wanted to do something, so I figured–why not continue with my “swatch” motif and knit a baby blanket? It’s basically just a gigantic washcloth, right?
I once again turned to Homespun yarn for the project–it’s both machine washable and dryable, and I thought its soft nubbly texture would make a warm and comforting fabric. I found a nifty pattern on Lion’s 
Web site for a baby blanket which is knitted diagonally–that is, you
begin with 5 stitches and increase one stitch every row until you’re half done, after which you decrease one stitch every row until you’re back at 5 stitches. Toss in a YO stitch along the borders, and the result is a nice diagonal pattern with a simple garter stitch border.
The pattern uses just over 2 skeins for the blanket, so I also knit up a little matching hat with the remaining yarn.
The blanket measures about 27 inches square; the hat fits a large grapefruit.
October 16th, 2006 at 12:01 am
[...] A while back I made a blanket-and-hat set for Mr. Baby. Mr. Baby is now two years old, and expecting a visit from a little his soon-to-be sister any day now, so I made this little set in honor of her arrival. The hat is based on Ann Norling’s Fruit Hat pattern; the booties socks are Dilys Sutherland’s Super Quick Baby Socks pattern. [...]
November 19th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
[...] So I went to my stash. There was a period of time a while back when I was not so good at doing gauge swatches and I purchased a holy sh*tload of Lion Brand’s Homespun to make a sweater, with which I grew disenchanted. It sat on my needles for several years, during which time I also made various other smaller Homespun projects (like this, and this, and this. I call this my Lion Brand period.). Since I had the same yarn in least six different colors, in whole and partial skeins, I thought they might possibly be good candidates for this scarf. They weren’t necessarily colors I’d bring together, but since they were all the same texture it might work. [...]