25reasons | chevron baby blanket

Wrapped In Baby Soft Chevron Knit

posted on March 8, 2012, at 8:11 am

Do you remember the saga with the little chevron baby blanket I started knitting for Austin? If yes, you’ll recall that the first skein of wool ran out well before it should have, leaving me with only 18 of the 20 rows I needed. After emailing The Purl Bee and doing a swatch gauge as was suggested, which came up exactly right, and then, after I emailed them the pictures I took of the swatch with my ruler showing the correct number of stitches per inch, and then not hearing a peep back from them, I decided it was time to come up with an alternate strategy. As you might remember, I ordered another skein of the cotton, but when more than a week had gone by and it still hadn’t arrived in the post, I picked up my circular needles and forged ahead with Plan B. Here’s the result.

Austin's Chevron Baby Blanket

How gorgeous is it! I’m so happy with it, I just can’t wait to wrap him up in it.

it drapes so beautifully, and feels wonderful in hand

The Blue Sky Cotton is a lovely yarn to knit with, although the blue has already shown minute signs of pilling, even though it hasn’t been used yet. I’m hoping that doesn’t get any worse, or it’ll be really disappointing. I’ll let you know down the track how it wears.

the underside looks great too!

See the blue (Mediterranean) stripe across the top? That’s the second skein that finally arrived. Thank god, because all of the skeins knitted up short by 2 rows. Overall, I had to make up 14 rows! That’s fairly significant. I can’t work out how the original blanket was made using the pattern they provided. It’s a mystery to me. I had the right size needles, the perfect gauge… Anyway, I think it turned out just fine in the end. Don’t you? Austin thinks so…

Now, what’s my next project???

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The Gauge Swatch

posted on February 14, 2012, at 11:32 pm

I received a quick reply from The Purl Bee, surprised – as I was – that I’ve run short on my yarn. Jennifer asked me to check the gauge, so I did another swatch. Here are the results:

4" = 12 stitches

I’ve emailed her this photo, along with these showing the length of my tail at the beginning, and measuring the actual blanket:

close-up of my knitting

not too long a tail

At least now I’m reassured that it’s not me or my knitting. I think this skein just came up short. Even though it apparently hasn’t happened in forever with this yarn. It definitely is very strange, don’t you think? Anyway, Purl Bee is being very helpful, so we’ll see what happens next.

Pattern Review | Chevron Baby Blanket progress

posted on February 13, 2012, at 10:45 pm

I fell in love with this blanket the moment I saw it on the Purl Bee website. It’s knitted in beautiful colours of Blue Sky Cotton, a gorgeously soft 100% cotton yarn. If you read my earlier post, you’ll know that I’d bought two extra skeins of yarn – one in Mediterranean, and one in Raspberry, planning to wait till my grandchild was born before deciding on which to use. When our darling Austin was born on 15th January, I knew the Raspberry was clearly out, and after much deliberation, I happily settled on this line-up:

Chevron Baby Blanket | colours - Mum and I converted the single-yarn skeins into double-yarn balls

First the Mediterranean, then Lemongrass, Lemonade, Bone, Tulip, Drift, and finally, Sleet. The Graphite didn’t make it in. So, one evening last week, I began knitting, but because I hadn’t done this for some time, I wasn’t fluent with the technical terms. I stopped pretty much immediately after having cast on my 100 stitches, and took the whole thing into my Wednesday morning sewing session with Trish, who ended up undoing a row for me that I’d messed up, before showing me how to proceed.

Great, no problem, I kept going, and for the next few evenings, I knitted and knitted and knitted. It felt nice, I remembered how much I enjoyed this craft, and in no time really at all, I approached the end of my first ball of yarn.

how pretty does it look!

If you decide to knit this blanket, I have some feedback about the pattern that I think is essential for you to know.

I'm nearly at the end of my first ball

Since my knitting supplies are void of counters of any kind, I created a little checklist to keep track of the repeats.

see the problem?

I still have another three rows to knit, but not enough yarn to even do one more row. I’m now not very happy. Even though the pattern makes mention of possibly running a little short with the first colour…

which I think is still not really acceptable

What am I supposed to do? I either make the first colour four rows shorter than the others, or buy another skein. Except now I’m wondering if I’m going to run into the same problem with each of the other colours, and will end up having to buy double the amount of yarn – most of which won’t be used of course since I only need an extra three rows – making this one of the most expensive little 26″ x 33″ baby blanket ever! I’ve written to The Purl Bee, asking them about it, and hopefully will get an answer soon. In the meantime, I’ve ordered one skein of Mediterranean from Jimmy Beans Wool (much cheaper postage $5.30 vs $17.50 quoted by TPB for shipping one skein of cotton, and cheaper prices in general). I hope it arrives soon. This little munchkin is already approaching his one-month birthday, and I need to finish his blanket before he outgrows it!

I’ll let you know how this goes. Wish me luck!