Baby Blanket

I have known for months that we are going to be Grandparents in June, but we were asked not to tell anyone until after the holidays, and then not to post on social media until spring. It may have been OK to tell a few people like my sister, but I decided that it would be stressful to remember who I told, and make sure not to say anything on a group text with people that were not supposed to know. It was easier to not tell anyone until the appropriate time.

One of the wonderful things about having a grandchild is that there is a new world of knitting and weaving possibilities. Last fall I had knit some socks that I thought were going to be for me. There was some yarn left, and my daughter-in-law, Kelsey, has almost exactly the same size foot as me. I decided to knit baby socks out of the leftover yarn and then give the matching adult and baby socks to her for Christmas. They were a hit, but unfortunately Wayne and I ended up getting covid right before Christmas and were not able to see them in person. I thought I took a photo of the two pairs of socks together, but I can’t find it.

I found a knitting pattern for a blanket that I wanted to try called To the Point Blanket. I originally saw it in the Webs magazine from fall 2019, and it kept popping up in other places where I see knitting ideas. When we were on our fall road trip, I saw that my aunt was knitting this blanket for one of her granddaughters. It is like a granny square afghan with individual knitted squares that are connected into a blanket.

The squares in the To the Point Blanket are very simple to make, but look interesting. The pattern is shown using variegated self striping yarn, so there are multiple colors randomly changing through the blanket. The suggested yarn is wool which is not good for a baby blanket. I found some washable self striping cotton yarn that I thought would end up with the same look but be better for the purpose.

Before ordering the yarn online, I emailed Kelsey to tell her I wanted to do this, ask her if she liked the pattern or would prefer something different, and let her pick out the colorway. She wrote back that she liked the pattern, and picked out a color option with shades of blue, purple and raspberry.

This yarn is thinner than the yarn used in the pattern, so I had to decide what to do about that. I could have tried knitting two strands together and maybe that would be about the same gauge as the pattern. For a baby blanket it would be better to be less bulky so I decided to try knitting with a single strand using the same number of stitches and see how it came out.

The squares are made by casting on 63 stitches, and then decreasing two stitches in middle of every other row. That results in a square with a diagonal “line” where you have decreased away stitches. Very clever.

First square complete! I like it!

You could make individual squares and sew them together like a granny square afghan. Instead the pattern has you pick up stitches across the top of the square you just finished, which becomes the bottom of the next square, and then you cast on stitches for the side. This pattern is repeated until you have a column of six squares.

The color changes do not happen as often with this yarn as with the yarn used in the pattern. I was hoping the violet color would show up in the first square. It came up in the second square…with a knot connecting it to the blue. ARGGG I hate that! I untied the knot and overlapped the yarn ends. The change from blue to violet is more abrupt than I thought it would be.

I really like the way the knitted fabric feels and drapes. It is very soft and flexible for wrapping or tucking around the baby. The photo below shows two squares completed and the third one started. The pattern has you make five columns of six squares, and then sew the columns together.

I do not like sewing knitted pieces together. I decided to try picking up stitches for the first square of the second column, so it would be already attached. First I cast on stitches for the bottom of the square, then I picked up stitches from the side of the first column. It worked perfectly. When I got to the second square of the second column, I was able to pick up all 63 stitches. That method worked for all the rest of the squares in the second column. I knitted the remaining columns the same as the second one, so that when I was done knitting there was no assembling or sewing. The disadvantage of this method is that it is a little cumbersome to work with once it is close to finished. If you make five separate columns and sew them together at the end according to the pattern, there is less bulk while you are working on it.

The color changes were not as often or regular as the yarn used for the pattern, so it came out with a different look. Some of the blocks of color are bigger and the transitions are more random. Some blocks have several colors, a few blocks have all one color. There were knots in the middle of most of the balls of yarn, which sometimes caused an abrupt rather than more gradual change of color.

Once all 30 squares were complete, I crocheted a border around the edge. I worked on this project almost the whole three months we were in Arizona over the winter. I was ready to work on something else by the time it was finished.

One day when I was shopping at TJ Maxx I looked at some baby blankets for sale. They were all about 30″ x 40″. The finished size came out just right at a little bigger than 30″ x 40″ which was luck on my part. I had started knitting the pattern and hoped it would come out about right, or figured I could knit a different number of columns or rows if it was too small or too big.

I gave Kelsey the blanket at a baby shower this weekend. I also gave her a baby size sweater I knitted that will be featured in another blog post. Watch for more hand made baby items in future blog posts!