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

Stitch Up Some Zen with This Easy Knit Blanket

Adding a bit of knitting to your fall decor is a lot of fun, whether it’s knit pumpkins or a bunch of adorable knit ghosts like these.

Knit ghosts can be super simple like this free ghost knitting pattern from Trixie Zynch on Ravelry. Using about 50 yards of worsted weight yarn, they’re worked from the bottom up and are super cute as a pair.

This fuzzy little ghost from Forest Knitting Toys is holding a pumpkin and wearing a witch hat, though of course the accessories are optional, as is the fuzzy yarn. The main yarn is chunky and the ghost measures about 10 cm/4 inches tall. It’s worked in the round.

Another fuzzy ghost in more of a Pacman style is this ghost plushie form South Stitch Girls. It’s worked in the round with bulky yarn and includes a sweet little bow you can make in whatever color you like.

The ghost doll from Edith Grace Designs has little arms and a curl at the top of its head. The body is worked flat using DK weight yarn and you could also work it in glow in the dark yarn for extra fun. The body and head are worked in one piece with the arms knit separately.

The Grim Grinning Ghosts from Susan Claudino are super cute and you can knit them in any yarn and gauge you like to make ghosts of different sizes. These are worked in the round with the body done in one piece and the arms are knit separately. The ghosts shown were knit in sock yarn, DK and worsted weight yarn. You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

Make a ghost with funny striped legs with this ghost shelf sitter design from Claire Fairall Designs. It’s worked in three colors of DK weight yarn, and the letters spelling out boo are made with strips of garter stitch sewn into shape.

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