In Which the Pirate Works on a Blanket.

A friend announced that she was expecting, and my first thought was that I should knit a blanket – because even though I’d long sworn off any obligation to knit for babies, that was before I had a knitting machine, right? I could crank out a blanket so fast, I told myself. It’ll be like nothing, I said. No problem at all, I said. And I ordered a couple of balls of Lion Brand Mandala.

You’ll note this is not a picture of a finished blanket, or even of a blanket in progress on the knitting machine…

I’d decided on a reversible tucked cable pattern in full needle rib, and I was through the first ball of yarn and into the second, when I noticed that I’d dropped a stitch somehow. Maybe it was related to a static issue, maybe there wasn’t enough weight on the tuck stitches, maybe it was gremlins. Either way, it wasn’t fixable, so I pulled the work off the machine and re-wound the yarn to begin again.

Meanwhile, I’d finished knitting my mindless stockinette socks and needed something else to work on during football games and knit nights. So here I am, knitting a baby blanket by hand…

The pattern is just a simple two-colour brioche rib. I carefully wound the two balls of yarn to be exact opposites of each other – yes, I know, it looks like there are four balls in that picture, but that’s because the put-up was too big for my ball winder to handle and I had to split them. The hardest part of this project making myself take a break from knitting it. I know I should, or my hands will hurt tomorrow… but I wanna see how the colours play out!