Sippy Cup

This is the second baby blanket I finished this summer, for another coworker who is expecting in January. It's made from yarn I had left in my stash, another great use of some leftovers. I lucked out with the blue and gray colors; turns out she's having a boy! I think this pretty robin egg blue would be just fine for a little girl, too though. It's certainly one of my favorite colors. 

This pattern is called the Baby Chalice. The lace repeat makes a cup shape that kind of reminds me of the Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. "You chose…. poorly." Thankfully I'm pretty sure I chose wisely, this piece turned out pretty well. 

Since I was using two colors, I went with stripes again. This time though instead of doing random color blocks like the last blanket, I took a more methodical approach. Pairs of stripes are 16 rows wide and the width of the stripe of each color increases or decreases by 4 rows. That is, 12 rows of blue, 4 rows of gray in one section then 8 rows of blue, 8 rows of gray in the next, and so on. It took some concentrating, but in the end I like the way it turned out looking.

This blanket was in the batch of pieces I blocked on Wednesday, and the design definitely benefits from a good blocking. Here is the blanket before I stretched and steamed it:

And here is what it looks like after. Instead of a bunch of squishy cables, the chalice pattern really comes out to play. 

I used approximately 430 yards of yarn on this, about 175 blue and the rest gray (Ravelry link). Believe it or not, I knit the whole thing on size 10 straight bamboo needles. Generally for something this wide I'd switch to circulars, but the grippy bamboo really helped me on this pattern with all the yo's and stitch slipping. I knit 7 repeats of the chalice pattern with 10 rows of garter stitch before and after (counting cast on/off rows). The piece before blocking was 22 x 29" and I blocked it to 30 x 34" using my trusty steamer.

I really like how this turned out, and I would definitely make one of these again. Maybe a larger adult size using a soft and squishy bulky yarn? Could be fun! For now, this one is all ready to be packed up and gifted, and I've got plenty more on on the 'to make' list before coming back to this pattern….