Ruthie's Farm

I guess it was inevitable that I would end up re-knitting this blanket and now that it's finished, I'm glad that I did! 

As you can see, I changed the border and added four more squares.  I really love the heartbeat design and, since I also love my little Ruthie, I decided to add a heart to each row.  I also changed the yarn from Plymouth Encore to Plymouth Jeannee.  This is a cotton blend yarn and is so soft.  You can just toss it in the washer and dryer which is important for babies.   The only drawback to the yarn is the yardage.  There's only about 110 yards in a ball so you do go through it fairly quickly and then you're left with all those ends to weave in!  On the plus side, it's fairly inexpensive and it comes in gorgeous colors.  Ruthie's blanket is a very pretty shade of aqua which my camera won't capture.  In these pictures, it looks like a gray green, and what's with this pink background?  I have it spread out on pure white sheets! 

If you look close, you'll see that I have four new designs in the blanket.  There's the hen:

And there's a new pig and a new rabbit. 



The goose is new too, but after knitting it in the original blanket, I decided that it needed to be scaled down a bit and I'm much happier with the leaner version.  (If only I could do that for myself!)

The dog and the cat are not new. They were the designs I did for the 2010 Dishcloth calendar only I tweaked them by eliminating the heart border.

I decided that the border needed some interest so I added the knit stripe.

Now, I know that some of you will want the basics, so here, in a nutshell is how I knit the blanket.  First, pick out which patterns you want and how many.  All of these patterns have the same stitch and row count.  I used 16 designs and my blanket measures approximately 31" x 34".  I used a U.S. Size 6 needle. I think it's a nice size to make it practical for just wrapping around the baby.  The side borders are 9 stitches of seed stitch, 3 knit stitches and 7 stitches more of seed stitch for the inner border.  Each design was done without the borders called for in the patterns which resulted in 27 stitches per design.  I knit seven seed stitches between the designs and finished with the 3 knit stitches and 9 seed stitches for the outside border.  The outside top and bottom borders have 14 rows of seed stitch and then I knit one row, purled one row, for a total of 4 rows while at the same time keeping the first and last 9 stitches in the established seed stitch pattern.  My cast on was 167 stitches total. The inner top and bottom borders have 9 rows of seed stitch.

While I do have a number of patterns that use 39 and 38 stitches, most of my designs are 37 stitches wide, so there are a lot to choose from if you want to make your own blanket (and I hope you do!) 

I'm happy to report that the blanket has already been put to use and Ruthie has given it her drool of approval!