Stripes ahoy!

Voila, the Striped Baby Blanket is finished!!! I finished weaving in ends just in the nick of time, and I think it turned out great. I'm really happy with it, and proud of Dave for sticking with it even when we were arguing about it constantly. I'd say he knit about half of the blanket, which is no small feat. I however, wove in all the ends. Yes, I would like a medal!

Project Stats: Striped Baby Blanket for Kristin

Pattern: Um, stripes? In either the two or four row variety. Inspired by yarn I had in the stash! The blanket is about 23x28".

Yarn: Cascade Cotton Rich, in 11 colors, If you want to know I can list them later. Six of them I had in the stash, from the Fiber Gallery sale last year, and some Dave purchased on the internets. Because I am a bad blogger I can't find where we bought the yarn, but they were super speedy with the shipping and I'd order from them again, if I could find them...we have the card at home. We used less than one skein of each color, and had a lot left of some of the colors that we used less frequently.

Needles: Size 8 Clover bamboo, 28" circular.

Time to knit: Something like 6 weeks. Dave and I both worked on this, and we procrastinated a lot at the beginning, or it would have gone faster.Impressions: This was SO fun to knit! I love the simplicity of the stripes, and how bright and cheerful they are. The cotton/nylon blend was a bit tough on the hands at times, which we could have solved by going up a needle size or two, but we decided to live with it because the size 8 needles produced a nice dense fabric. I think I prefer the wrong size (extreme close-up above), but both are nice, of course. If I do this again I think I'll do one and three row stripes, so that I can have some of that cool wrong-side look. Plus, I could have fringe, instead of weaving in ends until I was blue in the face and my back was killing me. Honestly, I've never seen so many ends. It took me at least 5 hours to weave them in. We gifted the blanket to Kristin and Mike last night, and I will say it was difficult to let it go. However, they loved it, and Dave and I are crossing our fingers that it will become the baby's favorite blanket. You know, the one that gets carried around everywhere until it's falling apart? That's what I want. Although this baby (the blanket) is pretty sturdy, so it might take quite a bit of abuse before that happens!

In other news, Anne-Marie and I attended the Seattle Knit-in-Public event on Saturday, and I won a door prize!It was donated by Pacific Fabrics, and contained a book (Quick Knits: Cool Projects), a clear needle sizer/ruler (the transparency is a good idea, so you can see the stitches under the ruler), a notepad, and a giant stitch holder. The book isn't one I would've picked out myself, but there are some patterns with potential in there. It was a nice thing to win, since I never win anything!

Both of the swaps I'm participating in are wrapping up this week, which is both sad and exciting. I mailed my Knitters Tea Swap package off to Amie this afternoon, and I'll be sending my final Secret Pal package this week as well. I'm really excited to find out who has been spoiling me!