Garter Stitch Baby Blanket

I just finished knitting this baby blanket for a friend who's expecting. It was simple garter stitch, but man, it seemed to take forever! This is my third baby blanket, you can see the first here and the second here.

Project Name: Garter Stitch Baby Blanket
Time Taken to Finish: 2 months
Finished Size: 27 inches by 33 inches (not including fringe)
Type of Yarn Used: Red Heart Soft Baby in Powder Yellow
Amount of Yarn Used: 1 skein (I needed a little extra for the fringe)
Needles Used: US size 10.5 needles
What I Liked About the Project: Since it was garter stitch the knitting was easy.
What I Didn't Like About the Project: It seemed to take forever to knit - I think it was because I was using such thin yarn (it was sport weight). For my previous two baby blankets I used bulky weight yarn which obviously knitted up much faster.

Instructions: Cast on 100 stitches. Knit all stitches until blanket is as long as you'd like (I stopped at 33 inches). Add fringe to two sides - there's a good tutorial for adding fringe at Fiber-Images.com.
Here's a photo of the finished blanket, spread out so you can see the whole thing:

Garter Stitch Striped Baby Blanket

Project Name: Garter Stitch Striped Baby Blanket
Time Taken to Finish: 3-4 weeks
Type of Yarn Used: Lion Brand Homespun Baby in Soft Violet and Snow White (Homespun Baby may be hard to find in stores...it was for me, anyway)
Amount of Yarn Used: 4-5 skeins, one skein for each row (had to use a little more for some rows because one skein was not enough to have them match the width of the previous rows)
Needles Used: US size 10 needles
What I Liked About the Project: No purling.  My last baby blanket was in stockinette and each purled row seemed to take twice as long as a knit row.
What I Didn't Like About the Project: Even after knitting swatches to determine how many stitches to cast on, I miscalculated and made it way too wide.  I had to pull it apart and start over because I would not have had enough yarn to finish it at that width.  Also, because the yarn unravels very easily, I had to tie a knot at the end of each piece of fringe.  That took quite a while!

This project was knitted for my friends April and Mike, who are expecting.  I actually knitted it before the socks in my last post, but I wanted to make sure they received it before I put up any pictures. 

I wish the Homespun Baby yarn was more widely available.  From looking around on the web, it sounds like Lion Brand may be discontinuing it.  That's too bad, because there are no equivalent baby colors in their regular Homespun line.

Baby Blanket

Wow!  This blanket was definitely the most time-consuming project so far.  It took me over a week to finish.  The pattern I used was called Easiest Baby Blanket from Ruhamas.com.  Originally I planned to knit it with size 15 needles and by holding two strands of yellow sport weight yarn together throughout.  However, I knitted a few rows with that yarn and I did not like the big holes it created (though later on vacation I saw a very nice baby blanket knitted with large needles and light yarn - in the finished product the holes didn't look strange).  So I went back to the store and purchased Red Heart Baby Clouds super bulky yarn in Blue Sky.  The bulk of this yarn makes the holes much smaller when knitted.

Unfortunately, I did not follow the directions very well.  For some reason I decided that casting on 75 stitches was not enough, so I cast on 90 instead.  This made the blanket very very wide - about 49 inches.  I then knit 102 rows, which made it 34 inches long.  I had been hoping for a finished blanket that was square, but by the time I got near the end of my third ball of yarn I could see that if I did make it square it would be gigantic so I stopped.

The hardest part of this blanket was alternating knitted rows with purled rows.  It seems to take me twice as long to purl a row than to knit one.  I probably could have finished it a lot faster if I had just knit the whole thing.

It may not be the prettiest blanket ever, but hopefully my friend (and her baby!) will like it.