list buster...

From my to-do list: my niece is having a baby (boy, she tells me), due in August and, as she now lives in Chile, I wasn't going to leave it to the last minute. Now, I'm the first to admit that knitting for babies is not my forte and in fact, I think knitting for the modern baby is mostly a waste of time, energy and yarn, but there are exceptions. Way back in Knitwords #34 and 35 (2005), Margaret Heck had given us a pair of baby blankie patterns that I thought were wonderful, called 'Edu-Cats' and 'Edu-taining Dogs'. Back then, I actually knit one of each and gave them to friends as gifts. The cat one went to my girlfriend's granddaughter, who is now ten. My friend recently told me that girl still loves that blankie, still has it in her bedroom and it's her go-to when she isn't feeling well!
I did think the cat one was cuter, but my family are dog people so I'm making the dog version. I'm using navy for the background and I wanted bright, crayon colours for the dogs - the orange was supposed to be 'school bus orange' but my mail order came in with a paler, more coral shade, but no big deal, I'm going with it - I didn't want the hassle of trying to return it - a downside to internet shopping! I had a royal blue and purple but they were too dark with the navy - didn't have enough contrast. You only need about 100g of each of the contrast colours but I had given all of my acrylics away a few years back when I was in one of those purging modes, figuring I was done with ever wanting/needing to use them (never say never, MAO!). The colours are actually brighter, more intense than these photos show - the top green is a beautiful bold lime...
The front is knit in fairisle as a single motif. The pattern is rather ingenious, I think, because, normally a picture such as this has long, untidy floats on the back and they are pretty unmanageable, but Mar has designed it with a knitted, striped backing which not only covers and conceals the floats but she has told you how to pick up certain stitches in the corners of each dog picture to attach the backing to the front so it doesn't twist and go all out of shape, kind of like a tacked, quilting thing, and it is a pretty quick knit! The front only took an hour and a half - it's a little slow because you need to wrap the edge stitch at the beginning of each row for the single motif - because of the border, the second colour doesn't go to the end of the row. For the backing I used the colours corresponding to the front doggy colours and it was really fast, less an hour, even with the pickups. The final stage is to finish the edges by encasing them with slip cord that is attached as you knit and I've done that in little bits here and there over two days. I did change that up a bit - she recommended double stranding the yarn for the slip cord and I didn't want that bother so used 4 stitches at T4 single, instead of 3 sts at T9 doubled and it worked nicely. One more thing, add yarn marks to the outside edges on the rows where she's telling you to mark for the pickups so you can align the edges easier.
Thanks, Mar! Another list thing crossed off! I'm going to have to make a new list...