Finished: Knitted Baby Blanket

How cute is that? I have one sweater, one cardigan and one hat all on different needles, but look: I made a blanket! It is only a baby blanket (read:small), but still it is done and from these pictures, badly blocked. Hah!

My sister is having a baby in November and I really wanted to knit her something special for her baby shower. I scoured Ravelry starting in May and waded through many, many and even more patterns for baby blankets. There are a sh*t-ton of baby blanket patterns out there and there are some *really* ugly ones. And some boring ones. And some really complicated ones. I chose one that fit all the following criteria:

• some sort of design element, cables or interesting stitch pattern as I knew I wanted a solid color
• could not be traditional for this uber-hip-mommy-to-be 
• had to be a smaller size (knitting a large scale blanket is never on my to-do list)

This one seemed right on the money. It had an interesting cable pattern, but looks much more difficult to knit than it seemed. Most people on Ravelry finished them in a little over a month and I thought it would look great in the grey I chose. The pattern is called the Sugarplum blanket. Notes on Ravelry are here.

I used the Spud and Chloë Sweater yarn which is a made from a blend of organic cotton and wool. It is machine washable, which was also a criteria of the yarn. I am sure my new niece, as cute as she will be, will not be without the occasion spill or possibly worse. Machine washable was a must.

The blanket took me about three weeks to knit. I averaged about 2 hours per pattern block. You can see towards the end of the blanket in the photo above (bottom right of the blanket) I must have just gotten tired/bored/ready-to-be-done, because I forgot to alternate the cables. That obviously means it handmade. Obviously.

The yarn is not a snuggly as I wanted to it to feel, even though it is soft. I am hoping it will soften up as time goes on. Does that actually happen with wool/cotton yarn? Let me know either way. But I do love the color. When I bought the yarn, we were still unsure of the gender so I went with something neutral. It is called beluga and it is such a pretty gray-silver. Just lovely. 

One of the other things I liked about this blanket was I really liked the pattern of the wrong side of the work. It is interesting enough to be shown and I don't want to constantly turn it to the right side. This was not part of my pattern criteria, but was the final element that made this pattern win out over the other contenders.

Before the baby arrives I will try wet blocking it again as I will have (as soon as I order) blocking mats and pins to do it right this time. Clearly just tugging while damp on a towel didn't cut it the first time. Any hints to blocking a blanket? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Does anyone else knit? Have you ever knitted a blanket before? Would you ever do it again? If I was forced to I might... ;)

Ciao ciao!