Honeycomb Baby Blanket

With my rush to finish fair items, I totally skipped over telling you about this project I finished.  It's not that I deem it less worthy, really.  :( Poor blanket.  Anyhow, it was very satisfying to finish this blanket.  It really was fun to knit.  Sometimes knitting blankets can be tedious because of their size, but this one never seemed to drag on.

The nice thing about it is its simplicity.  I used 3 colors of Red Heart's Baby Yarn, which has been discontinued.  Now I readily concede: I really hate Red Heart.  That statement could probably be truthfully expanded to include all acrylic yarn.  But I do admit it has its uses.  Acrylic yarn is the least expensive.  It is completely synthetic (think PLASTIC), so is machine washable and dryable - which is ideal when you're making kids' items.  It's always available in lots of colors, and can be found even at Walmart.  My mom ALWAYS works with it.  I think I'm a yarn snob *insert slightly guilty feeling*.  My grandmother gave me a TON of this yarn to use.  Waste not, want not - right?

But anyway, I'm off my line of thought.  3 colors of Baby Yarn: pink, blue, and a variegated white/pink/blue.  I decided to use the pink and blue as alternating honeycomb colors, and utilize the variegated to be the border of the combs.  I like it. 

I hesitated at first to make a blanket that included both pink and blue - because a lot of people feel firmly that pink is for girls and blue is for boys.  But let's stretch our imaginations, people.  My favorite color is blue.  I'm a girl.  And this combo of colors could be used for either sex!

Now, the honeycomb may look like a detailed stitch pattern, however it is simply slipping 2 stitches of the honeycomb border past 6 rows of the pink or blue honeycomb "body", if you will.  When the next border is started, you just knit across, finishing off those slipped stitches.  It's fun but not complicated.  I didn't need a pattern.

 

I had a sizeable blanket after using most of a skein of each color, and decided to move on to make a border.  As I was knitting this, I really wished I would have built a border onto it as I worked - by starting with 10 rows of garter stitch at the beginning, ending the same way, and putting 10 stitches of garter at each side.  But hindsight is 20/20 - so I needed to add a border after finishing it.  I decided to crochet.  There are enough crochet stitches in it to make the border wavy.  I finished the last row of the border with THIS MUCH yarn remaining!!!  SKIN of my TEETH!

Here are more finished pictures:

I'd like to make more blankets like this.  Wouldn't rainbow colors be cool?

In the meantime, I am not beginning another knitting project for now.  I have about 10 more rows before I finish my son's Spiderman blanket.  I hope to be project-less in time for the WHIMMYDIDDLE in 8 days!!!  I've started gathering all the stuff I need and I'm getting excited (with butterflies, of course!)

Tomorrow I'll post one more project completion - a weaving one!

Have a great day!