FO Friday: Radiating Star Blanket (2012 FO #8)

A few weeks ago I blogged about running out of wool to finish a baby blanket for a baby that's due this week. I bought wool in a complementary shade in a destash on Ravelry but in the end decided that having just part of the border in a different colour would look messy and unprofessional so I would hold out to find wool in the same shade. This meant I had to start another blanket immediately (babies don't wait for knitting projects to be finished, unfortunately!), so about two hours after posting about my dilemma I was in my LYS looking for wool to start a new blanket. As I entered, right next to the front door was a shelf full of - you guessed it - the discontinued Patons Soft Haze in the exact colourway I needed. Yay!

I gifted the blanket this morning and before I did I took some photos on my iPhone. I wish I had checked them before the blanket left my possession because they are just awful! Please excuse them and, when looking at them, visualise how soft, fluffy and gorgeous the blanket really is because you honestly get no sense of that from these pictures...

On my hallway floor...

The original pattern has you knit 95 rows of lace and then cast off. I liked the way the lace pattern looked but I felt that without a border the blanket looked a bit unfinished and would roll without the stabilising effect of garter stitch. So I stopped at Row 59, cast on 20 stitches and began a knitted-on garter stitch border.

With flash the lace pattern is clearer...

Of course I used absolutely no maths when deciding how wide to make the border so after I'd knit about 10cm I realised I was going to have to miter the corners. I figured since to change the direction of a border 90 degrees you did a short row every row, to change the direction of the border the 45 degrees I needed to to have the eight equal points required, I would do a short row every second row. So, knit 18 wrap and turn, knit 16 wrap and turn, knit 14 wrap and turn, et cetera.

Ugh - these photos are awful!

As you can see the border still ruffles a little bit, so I didn't get the rate of decrease completely perfect. Next time, instead of doing 3 decreases every 6 rows, I would do 2 decreases every five rows.

Even with the slight ruffled effect I think this blanket is gorgeous. It's super warm and cuddly and machine washable - all of the things a baby blanket needs to be. I hope the mum and the new bub like the blanket just as much as I do. I'm also super happy to finish my first Cast On Mania project in the required timeframe - GAAK, here I am.

Unfortunately, because I liked the yarn so much and it's been discontinued I bought 5 balls from my LYS and two from the Ravelry destash I mentioned above. That means that this stash busting project, which took 6.5 balls, actually increased my stash by 6.5 balls. Stashbusting - 0, successful cast-on mania baby knitting - 1. Oh well, I guess you can't win them all!