Finally, I get to blog about a stealth project that I've been working on (off and on) for months. I've been so excited about sharing this project, but I know that the Nicole occasionally reads my blog, so I had to stay quiet. Trust me, that's not easy for me

This will be a very long post, with lots of pictures. For those who aren't interested in all of the project details, I'll start off with the basic overview, and then you can skip all the technical bits. But I personally like the detailed stuff, and I get inspired by projects I see on blogs (and the processes that went into them), so I'd like to share them as well.

So first, the Reader's Digest version:

Remember Noel, of the Blu Jeans? Well, Noel's mother, Nicole, is a member of the small knitting group we have at work – we meet once a week at lunch to knit and chat. When she announced that she was pregnant, I had the idea of doing a group baby blanket as a gift for her. I suggested it to the other regulars, and everyone agreed. We figured we had several months before she left on maternity leave, so we'd have plenty of time. Yeah, right. It took a wee bit longer than planned, but we finally finished it, and invited Nicole (and her now 12 week old Noel) to come to knitting today at lunch, where we presented her with the blanket.

Left to right: Andrea, me, Amanda, Nicole (with Noel), Catherine. Missing from the photo is Julie, who also participated, and Marie-Claude, who is also part of the group)

The inspiration came from the Keepsake Blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting. The version in the book was done by 3 friends, so it was three strips joined together. Since there were six of us, we decided on 6 rectangles, 9" x 18" each, with 2 inch borders between and around. We chose the yarn and colours, and divided the yarn among us. I brought in several books for inspiration, and we were off. One person dropped out (she works full time and has two young ones of her own, so I don't blame her!), so I offered to do a second panel.

Noel seems to like it:

And here's the unabridged version:

The first idea was to do a Circle of Friends blanket, from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I think I first saw it here, and thought it would be a great project. But before we could decide what yarn and colours to use, Amanda and I were leafing through my copy of Mason-Dixon Knitting one day, and saw the Keepsake Blanket. We were sold. Since the knitters in our group range from beginners to more advanced, we thought that this project was something that people could have some fun with, and maybe learn some new skills.

Then came choosing the yarn and colours. We wanted something washable and easy to work with. After much discussion, We decided on Paton's Decor, in three shades of green and an off-white. I estimated how much yarn we would need, by doing some swatches, weighing and measuring them, and then calculating the weight of yarn required for the size we planned to make the blanket.  Amanda and I went to Yarn Forward to pick up the yarn, but found we didn't like the colours in person. So we spent an hour or so putting different combinations together, and came up with the colours you see above.  We bought 2 balls each of the two blues and the purple, 1 ball of the beige, and 4 of the red (1 for the panels, and 3 for the borders).

I took the whole thing home, and began splitting up the balls, using my handy scale and ball winder. In order to have some balance in the overall piece, we wanted there to be one predominant colour in each square, two secondary colours, and two accent colours (the beige and the red). So for the two accent colours I split the ball into six (sort-of) equal parts, and for the main colours I split one ball into 2 parts, and the other into 4 parts. I then packaged them up, with each package containing a half-ball of one colour, 2 quarter-balls of the secondary colours, and a sixth-ball of the beige and red. I took these to work, and had everyone pick the colour they wanted to have as their predominant colour. 

Here are the details on the panels, starting at the top-left (sorry for the picture quality – I photographed these in an office conference room, with no natural light!): 

This one is one of my two. I used Barbara Walker's Second Treasury, and flipped through until something caught my eye. I had a lot of fun with this, and got to try out lots of fun stitch patterns. I started with 40 stitches across, and increased or decreased as necessary to meet the stitch count of the pattern, and to compensate for denser or looser patterns. Some of my favourites from this little exercise were the Brocade Chevron (the purple 3rd from the bottom) and the Closed Star Stitch (beige and light blue).

This one is Julie's:

She did an intarsia winter sunset scene, with an embroidered snowman and snowflakes

Next is Catherine's:

Catherine is a new knitter. Until this project, she had done a few garter stitch, fun fur scarves, but that's it. I promised her that I would give her any technical support she needed, and she went off with a couple of my books for inspiration, which she found in Mason-Dixon Knitting. She loved the idea of the log cabin blankets, so she used that technique to create her piece. I believe she followed the instructions for the Moderne Baby Blanket, but changed the number of stitches and ridges to get the size she needed.

This next one is my second piece:

I wanted to use this opportunity to try some new techniques. Since it was knitting a 9" x 18" rectangle, with worsted weight yarn, I couldn't think of a better time to spread my knitterly wings and do something completely different. I had read about Japanese short rows, and wanted to try that instead of my usual wrapping method. As well, at a guild meeting last year, I had seen a woman wearing a multi-coloured vest that she had done using short rows. I have used short rows often, but always to change the shape of the fabric (for sock heels and the like). I knew they could also be used to make interesting shapes with colours, but I didn't quite know how that worked, so I wanted to figure it out. I looked through the books I have, but I couldn't find anything. I googled, but I also couldn't find anything (I'm not really sure what this technique is called, so I tried different search terms, like "short rows color", but to no avail). So I played around with it, until I figured out how it works, and I created my rectangle. Following this post, I will do a little tutorial on this (Edited to add: You can find the tutorial here)

The fifth panel is Andrea's:

Andrea is an advanced beginner. She too wanted to try some new stuff. She looked through the stitch pattern books, and decided it was time for her first cable. She did her panel in pieces, and sewed them together. First was the cable up the centre (after one false start – "Leanne, why doesn't my cable look like the picture?", she figured out the instructions and was off and running. Next, she did the two side strips, alternating colours and adding in some geometric shapes in the centre of each square with purl bumps. Then she sewed the two side pieces to the centre cable. But alas, the piece was too small, both in length and width. So she picked up the stitches along the sides and did another inch or so of stockinette in the purple yarn. 

And finally, my favourite panel of the whole blanket, is Amanda's:

When we initially talked about shades of green, Amanda and I were discussing possibilities, and I suggested a pastoral scene with green fields, trees and bushes, and of course, sheep. When we switched to blues, Amanda decided to go with an underwater theme, but she still wanted to keep the sheep, so she made it a snorkling sheep! She used stitch patterns, intarsia and embroidery to create her scene! She charted the whole thing out on graph paper first, and then knitted it. On the bottom, she used the Seaweed stitch pattern from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury. Later on, she used the Ripple Stitch from the First Treasury. In addition to using stitch patterns (both based on just knits and purls), she added in some intarsia to make a lobster on the bottom, some jellyfish, the sheep, a boat and a cloud! She then embroidered the snorkle and fins, the jellyfish tentacles and the lobster details. Most of this was stuff she had never tried before, but she had a vision, and figured out how to do it. Awesome!

Once everyone finished their pieces (and I admit, I was last!), Amanda, Andrea and I played around with the layout, to achieve the best balance (and to get Amanda's lobster in the bottom right corner, because that's where she wanted it!). Then I took all of the pieces home to do the borders.

I began by picking up stitches on one side at a time (every stitch for the ends, 2 for every 3 on the sides). I then counted how many I had (which was +/- 40 stitches wide, and +/- 80 stitches long) and increased or decreased as needed on the first row to get same number on each one. One of the pieces was too wide, so I picked up stitches an inch or so in. We had planned to put a backing on the blanket, so I knew that wouldn't be a problem. I did the borders in seed stitch, 1 inch wide, and then did a 3-needle bind off to join them together.

Another time, I would do it differently. Instead of 2 1-inch borders joined together in the middle, I should have done a 2-inch border, picked up the edge stitches on the 2nd piece, and done the 3-needle bind off there. That way, I could have done a 3-needle bind off in stockinette, and it would have looked fine. As I did it, the only way it didn't look like total crap was to do a 3-needle bind off in seed stitch. If you've never done that, trust me, you don't want to. It is really slow. There would have been choice words spoken, but I figured that would be inappropriate while working on a baby blanket. So I just smiled and told myself over and over that I would never do this again. Now, I realized it was a problem on the first seam, so why didn't I change the way I did it right then, you ask? Well, apparently, I'm a bit slow.

Once I (finally) had the pieces put together, I picked up the stitches along each side (one at a time). I did a 2 inch border in seed stitch, and mitered the corners as follows: on the first side, I increased in the first stitch on each row. On subsequent sides, I increased in the first stitch of the row, when there was not an adjoining edge. When there was, I knit into the edge at the end of the row.

Finally, my part was done! I passed it over to Julie, who blocked it, and then sewed on a fleece backing. She hand-sewed it around the edge (inside of the border), and then tacked it in a few places to keep it secure. No more ugly reverse side

I highly recommend this project if you're a group looking for a unique gift for a fellow knitter. You could adapt this to any number of people, and each piece can be as simple or as complex as each person wants it to be. It's a great way to try out new stitch patterns, techniques, etc. And the recipient is sure to love it!