Baby's Afghan

Somehow along the lines this has become a blog all about our pregnancy, preparations and the like. I promise to get back to the hope chest series - even though that is about kids too. But then again, it is what is going on in our house!

It appears that I will finish Miss Pear's Heart Afghan tomorrow, and will eagerly launch straight into baby's afghan.

For baby I will be knitting the Honeycomb Lace Baby Blanket.
I chose this this pattern because it was:

• beautiful,
• within my knitting ability,
• had lots of holes in the pattern which makes it perfect for a first blanket once we pass the swaddling stage. If baby somehow manages to get it over her face she can still easily breath - a question we asked our pediatrician when Miss Pear would no longer stay swaddled and we were debating about blankets! He responded by tossing her blanket over her face and showing us that as a crochet blanket with lots of holes the one we had with her was perfect to use because no matter what she could breath! (I did not like the sleep sacks because I felt like I was putting my baby in a potato sack! Not reasonable but how I felt.)

The only thing I did not like about this pattern was the size - 26 x 32 inches. It seemed awfully small to me!

I was shooting for about 30-35 inches by about 40.

So it was time for advanced math.

The wool called for was a gauge of 5 stitches per inch, or 20 stitches per 4 inches. The wool I got is 22 stitches per 4 inches, so just a shade smaller. Therefore I am calculating out my cast on stitches using 5 stitches per inch but 35 inches across, even though it will be a bit smaller.

Using 5 stitches per inch because it was easier and assuming 35 inches I figured out that I would need to cast on 175 stitches, but reading the pattern I figured out that the pattern can only be adjusted increments of 6 (Row 2 says knit 1 then do a repeating pattern of pearl 5 knit 1, so this means that the 6 pattern is repeating.) Therefore I adjusted to a cast on of 174.

To figure out how much wool I needed I relied on old fashioned area - not exact, but close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades.

The area for the original pattern was 832 square inches requiring 5 x 50 gram balls of wool.
Mine would be 30 x 40 or 1200 square inches, and my wool came in 160 gram balls. So I bought 3 balls, which is fine because they were on sale, I had a 10% off your entire order whether on sale or not, and it is always best to have a little extra than run out because knitting math never works as well in reality as in theory! Plus, leftovers can always be knit into a little hat and booties set!

As I work I can adjust. If it turns out that the blanket is indeed wider than expected, that can become the length and I can just knit until I am the width I would like for the length as this pattern will work either way and is forgiving in that sense!

So I have my pattern, my wool, my knitting needles, and a baby kicking to keep me focused! I think I am set as soon as I knit those last 4 rows of Miss Pear's afghan and cast off!