For Christian

I’m knitting a blanket that I hope will be for the first baby of my brother’s very close friends. That's my brother over there on the left. How I ended up on this project when I have 5 unfinished projects in my knitting basket is, as it often is, a result of prodding from my mum, my interest in doing stuff for people I like, and avoidance/procrastination of projects already underway. When we found out that Jeff and Dina were pregnant my mum suggested that I offer to Christian that I could knit something for them. Which is what I did. Of course, Christian didn’t want to trouble me in the slightest and was hoping that it wouldn’t be a pain in my neck to do something like this. I then had to beg and plead with Christian to let me knit something for this baby – something that would get me away from all of the complicated knitting projects that were yelling at me from my knitting corner. I didn’t want to calculate the armscye decreases for the sweater I’m designing/making for Rob’s dad, the stranded knitting I’m doing for baby Nathan’s sweater is kind of scary, my mum’s sweater is in this perpetual state of question about whether the sleeves are long enough yet, and my scarf requires constant stitch counting and a freaking lot of short rows. I wanted a nice simple project.

Christian relented and let me knit a sweater for his friends. That’s right. He said I could knit a baby sweater. I know what you’re thinking…you’re thinking “I could have sworn she said that she’s knitting a blanket for this baby. Did I misread? Was there a typo?” Nope – no typo. I tell ya – I wanted such a simple project to knit that I required that the project be square. Square it had to be. Row upon row of the exact same stitch pattern. I didn’t care if it took twice as long to knit – dammit – I wanted it to be mind numbing!!

And boy oh boy did it fit the bill. It has taken me a very long time to knit. I started working on it on August 18 and by the end of this week it will be finished. I’ve only got 8 more garter stitch rows to go. It’s a blanket of my own design, so to speak. My inspiration was the fact that the baby going to be born in Niagara right around harvest time and The Grape and Wine Festival. The blanket is about 2.5 feet square with a 2 inch garter stitch border all the way around and a trinity stitch lace pattern for the main body of it that gives it a bumpy texture. I even figured out a really cool way to solve the puckering problem that happens because garter stitch scrunches up and trinity lace stretches out (short row one row of the border every 4 rows).

So – now – I need to break it to my brother that I’ve knitted a lace blanket for him to give to his friends. I tried emailing pictures but it didn’t work very well. Christian – here’s what the blanket looked like when it was one third of the way done and here’s a close-up of the stitch pattern and border. If you like it – lemme know how to get it to Jeff and Dina for you. If you would be embarrassed to give them such a purple-y object, I won’t mind. It was a really fun knit. And there are babies sprouting around here like crazy! I’m sure I could find someone to give it to.

Love,

B.