My Latest FO

For the past week, I've been knitting a lovie, which I had never heard of before.  For those of you who are in that same boat with me, it's basically a burp cloth-sized blanket.  It's called a lovie because it's meant to be something the baby can love and can be a comfort item for the wee babe.

My property manager and his wife are having a baby, and I was in search of something quick to knit up for him.  I got some really great ideas, and I was going to do a Blanket Buddy (which I may still do), but then one of the designers on my FPT group suggested doing a lovie and a stroller blanket, which would still be less work and yarn than a full-sized baby blanket.  AND then she generously gave me one of her really lovely blanket designs.  She only designs baby blankets (and REALLY gorgeous blankets, at that), so I was extremely chuffed.

She had already given me one of her designs that I had fawned over last year, but when I was discussing this problem with her, I was saying that one she had given me was too intricate and pretty (read: labour-intensive) for this guy.  For a much-beloved friend - no problem!  But a property manager who I like but have no relationship other than that?  Sorry, dude.  So Aimee gave me her Mountain Chickadee pattern, which is pretty while being easy to understand and super-easy to memorise.

My property manager had given me a few colour ideas to work with and had spotted a yarn in my stash that would be perfect, so I took it to my LYS to shop.  (Well, honestly, I didn't, because I had purchased that ball at said LYS, so I just grabbed another ball like it while I was there and walked around the store holding it up to other things.)  I finally settled on Berocco Vintage since it has great yardage for the price and got a nice red-purple colour.

Here's the result (no, the colour is really that bright; it's a much darker, less garish colour):

As you can see, it has a garter stitch border.  Between the border is a simple repeat.  Once the first row of the pattern repeat is established, the rest of the rows are extremely intuitive.

 

Here's a close-up of the pattern repeat.  I really love it.  I'm currently working on the stroller blanket, and while it's obviously bigger, it (amazingly) goes just as quickly!