A Quick and Easy Baby Blanket to Knit

We had a bit of a fun surprise over the summer when a friend announced they were adopting a baby, with less than a month to go until the due date.

It’s never a good idea to spring a surprise baby on a knitter with short notice, but I was game to try whipping up my traditional gift of a knit baby blanket before baby arrived.

Of course he decided to come a little early, but the blanket was done in time for our first meeting, and hopefully will be getting a lot of use in the cooler months.

The design I came up with I called the Ozark Tweed Baby Blanket. It uses a three-color tweed stitch pattern from Barbara Walker and features a contrasting applied I-cord edging. My teenaged daughter picked out the colors — shades of blue and green with an orange border — based on the colors in baby’s room, and while I wasn’t sure about the orange, I really love it.

What I also love about this pattern is that it looks kind of complicated, and while it is a 12-row repeat it’s totally logical, and it’s really just four rows repeated using different colors. You carry the colors you’re not working with up the side, so it’s easy to see which color comes next, and every other row involves slipping half the stitches, so it’s faster than it looks. And it uses worsted weight yarn for speed and extra coziness.

I spent a lot of time watching the Olympics while working on this pattern, so I can confirm it’s good TV knitting once you get the hang of it.

And while I made it baby blanket sized (and have cast on numbers for different sizes of blankets you might want to make for little ones) it’s easy to adjust the pattern to any size you might like to make. All you need is an odd number of stitches.

You can grab the free pattern from my blog.

Knit a Blanket that Looks Like a Quilt

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I feel like felting is a knitting genre that deserves a resurgence. My first knitting book (which came out in 2008, eek!) was all about felting, but I don’t feel like there are a lot of felting knitting projects out there these days. I really like the technique as an easy way to make a thicker, more durable knit fabric, and it’s actually perfect for knitting bags.

The ZZ Bag from yamagara recently caught my eye and got me thinking about felted bags, and maybe remaking one of the bags that was in that book. This one has a fun zigzag pattern and is worked in worsted weight yarn. You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

A lot of the other knit and felted bag patterns I could find were older, but that doesn’t make them bad patterns. I’ve always loved the booga bag from Black Sheep Bags (the pattern is on their website but the photo is broken so you can also check it out on Ravelry). This is a fun one because you can use all your leftovers or a self-striping yarn (the original was made with Noro) to give it a colorful look that’s super easy to knit.

An envelope purse is another easy shape to knit, and this version from Lavender Hill Knits on Etsy comes in different sizes for younger girls and teens or adults. The small version is worked with one strand of worsted weight yarn, while the larger uses two held together.

The Japanese knot bag is a classic, and a felted version is a lot of fun. You can find this pattern from Cindy Pilon on Ravelry and knit one for yourself using bulky yarn. I also love her bag The Curve, which is also on Ravelry and has a fun rounded shape and contrasting handles.

And there’s also the amazing stained glass bag from Knitting Dream, which also uses a Noro yarn, but you could use wool scraps on the different fans to give it a unique look. There are two size options to choose from and it’s not as tricky as it looks.

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