My first knitted blanket!
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to give Christina the blanket I knitted her for her birthday – Data was claiming it for himself!
It does bring out the yellow in his eyes!
… which was funny to me, because he’s never shown an interest in any knitting project until this one. And even then, he just liked to paw at the yarn – he seemed intimidated by the blanket itself while I was working on it.
But once I was done? All bets were off. He snuggled right up.
And played a little.
I actually felt kind of guilty giving it away, since he loved it so much. I guess I will have to make him his own. I mean, it’s not like this one is cat sized – it’s a bit bigger!
So, last year, Christina showed me a blanket she liked that had such big yarn you had to use PVC pipe to knit it (similar to this)! Crazy! I’ve had the idea to make her “big yarn” blanket since then, and when I found out I liked working with jumbo yarn so much, I decided to make her one with that (technically though, this yarn is “super bulky”).
The blanket was super easy to make (It’s 76 stitches, 80 rows, all knit) and didn’t take me too long (seven days – started Saturday and finished Friday), but it wasn’t without its issues. The first being that I needed a ton of yarn and couldn’t find any place that could get me enough skeins in the same lot. I didn’t want color variation if I did a solid color, so I decided to do stripes (I used 5 skeins each of Yarn Bee Astounding in Teal, White, Charcoal and Mustard – interesting, there was quite a bit of white and charcoal leftover, but no teal or mustard. Each skein was 43 yards.)
Then I decided the stripes needed to be long and narrow and tried to cast on all four colors, um… big nope, that was a fail. Then I tried a lace pattern to make it more interesting, since I was doing the color blocks the other way, and that took way too much time and was confusing. So finally, I decided to knit all the rows. Ha ha. Nice and easy.
Then there were all the knots in the skeins. GRRRRR! And then I ran out of yarn at the end while I was casting off, so I had to take two rows out and cast off again (this was actually a blessing in disguise because I had one extra row in there, anyway).
But it’s finished. And it actually got cool out the last day I was working on it and it felt nice to have such a cozy, warm blanket on my lap! Christina will get good use out of it in the fall and winter!
I gave it to her today and she loved it! Yay!
Now, back to work on the baby blanket…
Themocracy
So wait, the baby blanket is harder than a big blanket?
No, I picked a super easy pattern for the baby blanket. It’s just labor intensive because it’s 150 stitches per row and uses much smaller yarn 🙂
Looks awesome! All of my blanket/large yarn projects were a bust. I could use a lesson!!
Thanks! Really? What happened? I feel like you can see errors a lot easier with the big yarn. :-/
that blanket looks awesome! I love the big yarn you used
Thanks! 🙂
It’s big enough for him to claim, it’s defined territory. My mom sometimes gets helps from her cats when she’s knitting.
Curious what went into your color choices. Love the blanket. Looks super-cozy!!
My hands ache just looking at that gorgeous blanket – it must have gotten heavy after a while! Your stitches look great and I love how bright and squishy it is – what a great gift!
Thanks so much! That means a lot, coming from you 🙂
The blanket did get super heavy (and hot, ha!) but I liked working with the 19s 🙂
I absolutely L O V E the blanket!!! It is one of the most thoughtful gifts anyone has ever given (made!) me!! Love you snister. And I loveee the colors. You picked colors you knew I would love and that would go perfecto with my casa. <3 <3 <3 <3
I am so happy you love it!!! I can’t wait to see what it looks like on your couch! I was thinking about that when I picked out your colors, and that teal is your favorite color too. Hope those colors don’t go out of style TOO fast! Ha!
Love you!!!!!! 🙂
Congrats on the blanket! Such a big project makes me nervous. Yours looks great, what an awesome gift!
Thank you!!!! 🙂 And you could totally do it. Have you still been knitting?
Boomer is a big fan of knitted blankets too. Turned out lovely
Thanks 🙂
Looks great!! I have not knit in many many years but I do love how the patterns of knitting come out – its just not the same in crochet.
Thanks! It’s funny you say that, because I am often drawn to patterns to see they are crocheted! Maybe someday we will both know both techniques 🙂
Perfect for the cold winter weather!
I feel like I got a play-by-play of it, but that [finished] blanket looks so amazing! The color scheme is really great — I like the mustard with the turquoise.
Do you think you’ll knit yourself a super bulky blanket too?
Thank you! And I try to always remember to give you the play by play! Ha!
I don’t think I will make one for me, but I might make a mini one for Data 🙂