Knit this adorable baby blanket, striped with greatest ease

In yesterday’s post, we talked about wearing stripes and I really must say when it comes to knitting stripes, I’m very impressed with the VERY NEW Red Heart’s striped pattern repertoire. On With Love Stripes page, there are already several striped patterns linked directly to the yarn, but when you’re first working with self-striping yarns, it can be confusing and you’re really not sure where to start. Score one for Red Heart because they’ve already got so many patterns ready to go for you. The first one I’m going to go over with you is the Self-Striping Baby Blanket.

When I first unboxed this yarn, I was thinking to myself that the color repeats couldn’t be that long, that they’d be best for socks. Really thick socks at that, but what else was I going to make with them.

I’m no longer skeptical about these striped skeins because when I actually did measure the length of the yarn in the repeat it was 27”, as I said in Tuesday’s post. Again, as I said in Tuesday’s post, you really don’t realize what kind of length that gives you until you’re knitting with it. This blanket calls for 118 stitches to be cast on and the final measurements are 36” x 38”. That’s a crib blanket, there’s no way around it. I can’t believe the stripe pattern is still happening at that length, but it makes complete sense to have the pattern repeats that long.

There are going to be many happy baby blanket knitters out there.

The pattern itself is a simple one, easy to memorize. There are really only two rows of pattern and the other ten are variations on stockinette and garter stitch. It adds texture around the pattern rows and a garter stitch boarder. With this pattern you’ll be zipping away in no time. If you’re not one for patterns, you can simply use the shell of this pattern for your own baby blanket. Cast on 118 stitches and do five rows of a garter stitch boarder (to prevent curling) and head off into stockinette oblivion. You’ll get the same nice slim stripes as you see in the pattern, but with a stockinette finish. Don’t forget to do your garter stitch boarder as you go and at the very end of your blanket.

This is an excellent pattern to start sharpening your appetite for stripes. If you don’t currently have any babies to knit for, or any on the way, you can always knit this up and put it in the future gift pile. There’s no harm being prepared and you never know when you’ll need an unexpected baby shower gift.