Baby Miter Blanket

I finished the baby miter blanket yesterday with the leftover* corntastic yarn:

*leftovers plus 2 extra skeins to make the colour scheme work

The blanket was inspired by the Mitered Square Blanket in Mason-Dixon Knitting by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne. But instead of stocking stitch, I used all garter, and alternated the colours every 2nd row.

Here's the basic instructions for my version of the pattern:

• Cast on 40 stitches. (Place a marker between the 1st 20, and the 2nd set of 20 stitches.)
  
• Row 1: Knit all stitches
• Row 2: Knit until 2 stitches before the marker, k2 tog. Slip marker, ssk, knit to end.
• Change colour.
  
• Repeat row 1 and 2 (changing colour after every row 2) until you have 2 stitches left -- k2tog and pull yarn through.
  
• Sew all squares together. Add a crochet border (double crochet around the edge, working 3 dcs into every corner).
  

Things I would have done differently:

1. Plan the colour scheme out in advance -- it wasn't until I was 2/3 of the way through that I decided to match up the colours so that each outer edge would match the colour of the edge it was placed next to, and each inner colour would match the inner colour of the squares that it was placed next to. You can only imagine how long I played with this 'puzzle' until I found a way to make it work, and then fill in the blanks.

2. Leave the ends until the end -- I thought I was being good by weaving in the ends of each square as I went along. If I was smart I would have left longer tails, and used these for sewing the squares together. As it was I think I did 2x the amount of sewing that was necessary.


3. Wash and block; do not iron -- I washed and blocked, but because I'm impatient and wanted a picture, I decided to throw in the dryer and then just iron the edging. Bad idea -- turns out this yarn doesn't agree with a hot iron! Luckily it was just an edge and I pulled the iron away before any real damage was done!

So there you have it. It's done, and will be winging its way back to the UK this week.