Baby Blanket Success!

Finally, here are some additional pics of that knitted chevron baby blanket I had started in May for my friend's baby.  I finished it just in time, too!  I was on the plane to California, squished in the window seat, frantically knitting the last two color swatches.  And when we landed, I turned on my phone and found out that my friend just had her baby, on Father's Day!  What a sweet coincidence :)

Here are some pics of the blanket in progress - I tried to take a picture after each color swatch, but obviously couldn't take pics while I was on the plane.  The good thing about doing this kind of project on the plane was that I was using circular needles, so I never lost my needles.  During my return trip home I was using double-pointed needles on another project, and I dropped a needle at least three times.

Three colors!

Four colors!  Here you may be able to see how there is a border where the color swatch changes - in this photo there is one between the 1st and 2nd swatch, and the 3rd and 4th swatch.  If you follow the pattern exactly, normally all of these borders would appear on the same side of the blanket, but because I could not cast-on the same number of stitches the pattern called for, I didn't have the same number of rows of stitches for each color.   So I ended up changing the color on opposite sides of the blanket, resulting in borders on alternating sides. Which looked fine!

Five colors!

Six colors!

And... ta-da!  The finished blanket!  It turned out to be bigger than I thought it would be.  Partially because I added one more color.  If I did just a few more colors, this blanket would be big enough for me to snuggle under!  It's really soft and squishy - I'm definitely thinking about making some adult-sized versions in the future.  It wasn't hard to make, either, just takes time!

I do recommend Blue Sky Alpaca yarns for the project.  They're a little pricey, but they are so soft and come in a range of beautiful colors.

Knitted Chevron Baby Blanket Prep

I'm in the middle of a bunch of knitting projects right now but my friend is about to have a baby in two weeks so I'm putting aside my stuffed bear with one arm and half-finished stuffed carrot to make this crocheted knitted baby blanket.  (I must have been suffering a brain fart - I kept referring to this as a crocheted blanket but it's knitted!)

Since I'm still pretty much a beginner at this I wanted to make something with simple stitches so I could get it done in time.  I found this pattern for a Chevron Baby Blanket at purlbee and thought it would be pretty cute and soft.

I bought my yarn at fabulousyarn.com, which has a good selection and good prices.  If you buy a certain amount you can get a pretty significant discount, too.  I went with the suggested brand, Blue Sky Alpacas,  after checking reviews on Ravelry.com.   I'm pretty impressed with the variety of resources available online now!  If you don't have an account with Ravelry yet I recommend it.  It's a great way to find patterns and recommended yarns.  I also like to look at other people's finished products on the same pattern.

This is a snapshot of the yarns I'll be using to make my blanket.  I wound these all by hand, which was kind of a pain!  Some of them were more tangled than others to begin with so they took almost 30 minutes to wind up.

Someday I may invest in a swift and yarn winder.  Someday.  By until then, I'll keep winding by hand.  I followed the steps in this video, Winding a Center-Pull Ball.

I've now finished almost two colors swatches and here's the state of things now:

This was the first time I had to cast on more than 25 stitches, so figuring out how much yarn to leave was a major pain for me.  I first cast on 10 stitches, took them off, measured the length, multiplied by 10 and then started with that length.  When I got to the 100th stitch, I had a huge tail.  The instructions warned not to leave too long a tail because we'd need all the yarn to finish the swatch, so I measured the extra amount I had left, took it all apart, and tried it again with the original length -minus- the extra amount I had left.  Again, I was left with almost 30 inches.  Took it apart again.  AGAIN, 30 inches leftover.  This happened about 4 times and finally when I *still* had an extra long tail, I just decided, screw it, I'll just cast on more stitches and make the blanket wider.  To compensate I'm going to throw in another skein of yarn into the mix.

Good thing I'm not working on clothing, because this methodology won't work.  Figuring out the correct cast-on length is something I'll have to work on.

I also miscounted while knitting one row and had to take that all apart, which was not fun at 3 in the morning.  Maybe I shouldn't have been knitting at 3 in the morning.

Side Note: I was looking for an easy way to transfer photos from my iPhone to my computer without having to connect the two devices and so far I'm enjoying success with the Wi-Fi Photo Transfer app.  Any other suggestions out there for other fast, easy methods for transferring photos?

Stay tuned to see my progress on this project!