Deciduous

When I heard that one of my coworkers was having a baby, I took it as the perfect opportunity to knit up one of the projects I've been eying in my Ravelry favorites list. The Leafy Baby Blanket caught my eye with it's simple and classic design. I won't lie, the feature project being gray also helped. I've got a gray thing going on lately.

Endeavoring to keep to my stash, I threw a few skeins of Nature's Choice Organic Cotton from Lion Brand (not gray...) in my craft bag as I was headed off to Florida for vacation in July. I love the feel and weight of this yarn, and I made a great cowl with some of it (pre-this blog!), but I had never found a suitable project I wanted to use the rest on. The organic cotton is the perfect choice for this particular recipient, and I thought the natural colors would also suit the leaf design both in spirit and simplicity.

Taupe, Espresso, Dusty Sage, Macadamia

This was great airplane knitting and also a nice relaxing activity for the evenings after action-packed days of Disney and Universal Studios. Taking just 2 weeks from cast on to cast off, with only intermittent knitting time, it was satisfying to work with thicker yarn and see the inches fly off the needles.

Since I was working with what I had on hand, stripes seemed like a good solution. Each stripe used up all of the yarn of each color with the exception of the green. I had one full skein and one partial skein, so I went with two stripes instead of one big green section. 

The pattern was simple but turns out looking quite complex. It looks fine as-is, but will definitely benefit from blocking to even out the fabric and straighten up the lacy bits. True to form, this sat around in the closet for a while while I worked on other things. Today I sat down to weave in ends and get it blocked. 

The piece started out at about 22 x 26" and I stretched it out to 27 x 31.5" with blocking wires. Oh how I love my new wires! They make straight lines so much easier. I steam blocked with my handheld steamer and let it dry. After I took it off the wires the blanket relaxed to 25.5" x 31", close to what the pattern states and a nice carrying or carriage size. 

The baby isn't due until December, but there is a baby shower this weekend so I suppose I finished with good timing! This will get wrapped up with some ribbon and a little tag with washing instructions for the mom-to-be.