Good Karma Baby Blanket

 

Over the weekend, I started and completed a baby blanket on my Bond Sweater Machine. It is made from 4 skeins of Caron Simply Soft. I knit it as part of a swap on Ravelry called Guilty Pleasures/Good Karma. In the swap you give luxurious swag & as thanks for receiving a box in kind, donate a knitted or crocheted children’s item to Warm Woolies,

I thought this would be a great time to try out one of the patterns from the pattern book that comes with the sweater machine. In it you knit 3 strips of squares in different colors. As you knit the 2nd and 3rd strip, you seam as you go by placing the last stitch of the previously knit strip on the last needle of the strip you are knitting. Then you don't have to sew as much. I liked this technique but as the blanket got longer the weight made the stitches on the end looser and those don't look as nice as the stitches at the bottom. I was using the weighted hem that comes with the machine but I've read on the Bonders list on Ravelry about using claw weights and this might help. I'll have to check it out.

After, I knit the 3 strips on the machine. (I finished 2 strips on Friday night and 1 strip on Saturday), I crotcheted the short ends with a row of single crochet and 2 rows of double crochet. It still wasn't enough to keep it from rolling, but it did help some. The hardest part of the blanket was sewing the hem on each of the long sides. Well, it wasn't hard, just time consuming.

I like sewing things in the round so I don't have to do seams but with this blanket you can't do that. In a flat knit item I could have knit a garter stitch border but that isn't really easy to do on the machine. One of the people who made this blanket did a ribbing on the side. That is easier to do on the machine but more time consuming that just striaght knitting. But it probably would still be faster then sewing at the end. Plus when you finished knitting all 3 strips all that would be left was the crochet bottom and top and weaving in. Or I could use waste yarn when I start and then pick up those stitches to do a ribbed bottom and I could do the same at the top.

Anyway, it was a fun blanket to knit and it was nearly instant gratification. Nearly.