Basketweave Knit Blanket

Once upon a time, I dusted off my knitting machine and started on a half-baked project idea.  My nephew/godson was going to be born in less than a month, and I wanted to make him something special.  Spoiler alert:  it actually turned out!

First, I machine-knitted 14 rectangles (I will call them scarves, because that's pretty much what they are).  Each scarf is 25 stitches wide, 214 rows long.

Next I pressed them, since they come off the knitting machine wanting to curl in on themselves.

I started laying my scarves out, weaving them together and tacking the outside corners.

My work surface isn't quite large enough for my project, so getting my spacing correct was a little frustrating.  Also, even though each scarf was the same number of rows in length, and was made out of the same brand and weight of yarn, some scarves were shorter than others.  If I was a more serious knitter, and didn't just jump into projects with little more than a glimmer of an idea, I might bother to do tension swatches and avoid this issue.  Instead, I just dealt with the problem by fudging the scarves around and eyeballing "even" spacing.

Here it is all woven together.

Once all the scarves were woven together and spaced to my liking, I went around the edges to tie the scarves in place.

This was as far as I had planned, and my blanket looked a lot like a pile of laundry, so I decided to make a gin and tonic and read about dinosaurs for a while.  (The kiddo was asleep for the night.  Don't worry, I don't go boozing mid-day.)

I was amused to learn about the Irritator.  Someone had modified the skull of this species of dinosaur, and when the scientists learned of the tomfoolery, they were irritated.  So they named it Irritator.  Love it.

After laughing about the Irritator for a while, I decided my next step would be to pin the woven scarves to the fabric I was using for a backing to the blanket.  This would help maintain a square(ish) shape.

Once I was done pinning, I tied knots at each intersection of scarves to keep them from curling and to maintain my spacing.

I had intended to use my sewing machine to sew down the length of each scarf, but this ended in a tangled disaster and a bit of swearing.  After dropping the project for a few days (to make a viking hat for my son, among other things), I determined the best way to hold the scarves together would be just to hand-sew a running stitch along each scarf.  I was pleasantly surprised to find how quickly that went.  I think it took me three episodes of Friends on Nick at Nite to finish this part.

Here it is all stitched down.  No baby arms will get tangled in there now!

My last step was to fold the edges of my backing over twice and sew it in place for a binding.  I hand-sewed the corners.  That was way too bulky for my machine to deal with!

Here it is!  I was surprised and very pleased with how well this turned out!  I got to meet my newborn nephew over Thankgiving weekend, and give him his new blanket.  I think it will keep him very warm over the North Dakota winter!