People seem to love to knit blankets for babies. I myself have knit one baby blanket, and I more or less enjoyed the process. But it is a long process, and it’s hard for me to imagine taking on another baby blanket any time soon, especially as a baby shower gift.
Perhaps others agree with me that the baby blanket is a rather large commitment for a gift, since knitters always seem to be looking for the next big thing in baby shower gifts.
I may have found it. I present to you the Carseat Blanket.
The idea for the Carseat Blanket came to me when my friend Rebecca was kind enough to tote her newborn infant to my house along with gobs of maternity clothes that she no longer needed and had carefully selected to suit my personal taste. (Thanks, Rebecca!) While her daughter Madelyn was lounging on the floor in her carseat –
(perhaps you wish to see a picture of Madelyn wearing the dress I knit for her? yes?)
– while this specimen of chubby baby cuteness was lounging in her carseat on the floor, I noticed how very small the infant carseat is, and I thought, "Man, you don’t really need much of a blanket to cover up such a little baby!" Indeed, the bigger the blanket is, the more you have to fold it and tuck it out of the way so it doesn’t drag on the floor while you carry that stupid behemoth carseat around.
What the parents of a newborn really need, I decided, is an itty-bitty blanket. A blanket just big enough, say, for Leona. A blanket about two feet square. Voila!
The Carseat Blanket is the perfect project for the overworked knitting enthusiast and/or slightly weary pregnant knitter, since it can be knocked out in four or five hours of knitting time, tops, on biggish needles. It is also a good project for the lazy knitter, since you can cast on as many stitches as it seems might be appropriate, knit the middle part, and then just keep cranking out that edging until you run out of yarn. If you cast on too few stitches, so what? Your edging will just be wider and therefore cuter. Too many stitches? You’ll have a narrower edging, but it won’t matter, because rose stitch doesn’t require a border to lay flat in any event.
Can you tell that I’m inordinately pleased with myself?
Pattern: My own.
Size: 22.5 x 23.5 inches
Yarn: Aslan Trends Guanaco (60 percent alpaca, 40 percent merino wool; 145 yds per 100 g skein) in blue jeans and papaya
Source: Loopy Yarns, Chicago, IL
Needles: US 11 (8.0 mm) circular needles
Gauge: About 11 stitches over 4" in both rose and garter stitch
Notes: Rose stitch is one of my very favorite stitches. It’s much simpler than it looks: on the front side, you knit one into the stitch below, then purl one, and repeat these two actions all the way across. On the back side, you knit all the stitches. Then on the next right-side row, you offset by one stitch. If you want striped rose stitch, you change colors every other row. Through some bit of knitting alchemy, it ends up looking like this. Easy peasy, and it spreads like all get-out. The body of this blanket only has 40 stitches across (for about 18 inches of the width) and is about 90 rows tall, so it didn’t take much longer to knit than a little 40-stitch swatch would have.
On a negative note, I feel obliged to say that I only sort of liked the Guanaco yarn that I used for this project. I really enjoyed the colors (which David picked out), but the texture is a little problematic. According to the Ravelry page for the yarn, it is billed as "snuggly bulky soft Alpaca wool." "Just touch it and you will love it forever," the company urges, since it is "specially designed for softness and comfort."
I hate to rain on Aslan Trends’ parade, but if you want alpaca/merino yarn to be soft, you have to remove the guard hairs from the alpaca. Otherwise, you will have a very soft base yarn that is bristling with, well, bristles. It’s acceptable for an outer layer, but I wouldn’t want it against my skin, and I sure as heck wouldn’t put it directly on a baby’s skin. Maybe I just got a bad batch?
At any rate, this was such a simple and fun project that I’m thinking of making another in a solid color. I have two skeins of red cotton yarn that need a purpose. Anyone interested in the pattern for this? I could probably refine it in the next go-round and write it up for public consumption without too much difficulty.
I would love a pattern! I’ve never wanted to knit a baby blanket because they seem so big and boring! But this looks perfect!
What a lovely idea, and a fantastic pattern
Yes, please do write up the pattern – it’s adorable! And congrats on pending motherhood. It’s a wonderful job.
Jean.
Lovely! I have slogged through one too many full-sized blankies, I think
and this is a great idea. I like the style, too, a little bit vintage, a little bit modern.
Kathleen
Yes! Yes! Pattern please. So cute – would look good in any size. Thanks for sharing.
Adorable blanket. I’d love to have the pattern. Coincidentially, I just finished the rose pattern square from the Learn to Knit Afghan and was sort of fascinated by it. I also thought of it in connection with baby knitting – perhaps for the skirt of a little dress like Maddie’s.
Yes! Pattern please!
)
Nice for those cold Wisconsin winters! You don’t _have_ to carry the baby around in the carseat, but in the wintertime, it is useful to bundle them up inside and just click it into the base rather than fussing with the straps in the cold cold outside. Having a little one actually made me warm up the car on a couple of occasions. It also made me re-think whether or not I actually had to go anywhere…
I would love a carseat blanket pattern. I’ve knitted baby blankets before, but honestly after knitting them 4 or 5 times, I’m done and really just refuse to do it anymore. I think a carseat blanket is good because it’s not too big. At baby showers, so many people buy baby blankets and usually so many are received, it hardly seems usable, but a carseat blnaket sounds like a good size and easy to work up.
I am going to my yarn stash right away to make this blanket. It is so cute and I need a baby gift. Thanks
I have the pattern but I cnat figure out the “backward loop method”. do you have advice or a link to a video of this method? please. thanks
I was looking for blanket ideas and your car seat blankie is lovely and different.
I know this is a response to a post made long ago, but in case you are still looking for a flexible pattern for a baby blanket, try this: use the diagonal cotton dishcloth pattern, where you cast on stitches, double decrease in the middle until you have a square, and then put garter stitch edging all around. I did one of these once for my niece and it was one of those projects that lives forever. I swear the kid will be taking it to college with her; it’s threadbare and torn up but still much-loved now that she’s 7. The beauty of the concept is that if you don’t have enough yarn you can make the border in something else. Only knitters would know or care that you ran out of yarn and substituted. I cannot remember the number of stitches cast on, but I do know it’s 72 for a dishcloth, so you could work from there (beginning knitting on needles will be twice the length of a side of the square). Thanks for the tips on rose stitch – I was working off an internet pattern that had an error in it, so I appreciate this explanation.
L. Redmond, Chicago, IL