a blanket for my nephew

My sister gave birth to a son, the first of “the next generation” on my side of the family. Baby JWS was born June 26th, 8 lbs 12 oz. From the pictures my family has sent, I can tell he is super-cute and doted on by his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I am looking forward to meeting him in person later in July. Welcome, baby J!

The last few months I’ve been knitting a colorful blanket for him. It’s the Mitered Square Blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne. The first stage of this project was choosing the colors – I spent several afternoons at the Knit Shop, sorting through piles of Berroco Comfort trying to narrow it down to 8 colors. The blanket is made up of 36 squares, arranged in 9 blocks of 4. (Basically, it’s a quilt, but knitted.) Each square has 2 colors and I knit each of 28 unique combinations, plus some duplicates. Each block of 4 contains all 8 colors – arranging them was like a puzzle.

The not-so-fun part, as every knitter knows, was weaving in all those ends on the back. But, I was planning to back it with fabric so they didn’t need to be hidden, just secured to keep the blanket from unraveling. I found a stretchy, rib-knit fabric to make the backing and I tacked it at the corner of each square.

I’m very happy with how the blanket came out – it’s nice and contrasty for J’s early vision development. He was born into a heat wave but once the weather cools down I hope it will carry him through the first of many winters cozy and snuggly.

Ravelry link