Carson's Blanket

I knitted this blanket in the summer of 2005 for little baby Carson, the newest edition on my husband's side of the family. I modified a pattern which I found at this site, Psychedelic Squares Afghan: Stocking St Version. This was a very fun project! Do you recognize the edging? It's what I used for the Red Tent Baby Blanket. Instead of knitting separate squares, as the pattern indicates, I provisionally cast on the edges of the squares, and held the cast on loops on a piece of yarn. Then, when that square was finished, I put one side of the square's cast on edge back onto a needle, to start on the neighboring square. I knitted along the side of the old square, in the new square's color, then provisionally cast on the other side of the new square. In this way, I only had to sew up two long seams, and 4 really short seams, rather than a jillion little tiny seams. The middle four squares were knitted in one piece, the four corners were all separate squares. Do you see the sort of tic-tac-toe-board lines on the blanket? These are the seams. When it came time to knit on the border, I only had to put the provisional cast on back onto the needles, and away I went!

I knitted this blanket out of 4 colors - the yarn that was left over from Emma's poncho. If I knit this blanket again, I'll use 5 colors. Each bullseye will have one color that is repeated across all of the 4 squares which make up the bullseye, with 4 other colors - one color per square. See how the upper, left hand bullseye has orange in three of its squares, and one square has pink and green? They should all have orange - but I couldn't do it this way with only 4 colors from which to choose. All of the squares in the whole blanket will have one color - which will be the same color as the border. I think that this will make it much more op-art-ish. Yup. Now, I just need to find the time, and someone has to have another baby. *smile*