We have a new striped blanket in the shop!
Last year we made a big chunky blanket knitted in King Cole Ultra Soft Chunky. It was a larger version of the Simple Blanket pattern popular for baby knits. You can download both of those patterns here.
King Cole Ultra Chunky has now been discontinued so we need another shop sample.
One of our new chunky yarns is Stylecraft ReCreate Chunky. It's a blend of recycled wool, acrylic and polyester. It has a robust, almost cotton, feel with a satisfying weight. The recycled fibres include little tweedy pops of colour which adds extra interest to the range of bright popping shades.
Our first shop sample using Stylecraft ReCreate Chunky was a practical and easy knit slip over. You can see that here. But I really wanted to knit a new chunky blanket!
For this blanket I decided to knit it all garter stitch.
And, I kept the rolled edge as it so simple to make and very effective.
I first saw this edge in Stephen West’s Garter Squish blanket (a great stash buster, check it out on Ravelry). To make it you do the following at the end of every row: -
Work to the last 3 stitches of the row. Bring your yarn forward, between your needles. Slip the last 3 stitches purlwise, one at a time, from the left needle to the right needle. Turn your knitting around and you’re ready to work the next row.
So simple.
I used 3 shades for this blanket - 3375 Teal, 1941 Ecru and 3429 Pumpkin.
3 balls of Teal and 2 balls each of the other shades. This gives a total of 980m of chunky yarn.
To get the same stripe sequence you'll need 420m of the main shade and 280m each of the two other shades.
But! The beauty of this type of blanket is that you can stripe it however you like.
The pattern is written in easy to follow sections.
The sections are, from bottom to top:
Section 1 – one colour
Section 2 – 4 row stripes in 2 colours
Section 3 – 2 row stripes in 2 colours
Section 4 – 8 row stripes in 2 colours
Section 5 – 2 and 4 row stripes in 3 colours
Section 6 – one colour
When striping colours within a section you don't need to cut the yarn. This keeps your yarn tails to a minimum and saves you lots of time.
To keep your edges tidy I recommend wrapping the unused colour under the new colour. In these photos I've wrapped the orange yarn around the teal.
And now I'm ready to knit with the teal yarn...
This is especially important when working section 4. As the stripes are over 8 rows, not wrapping the yarn under means the unused yarn is carried straight up the rows.
Our blanket measures 100 x 110cm. To make it wider cast on more stitches. To make it longer knit more rows.
If you achieve the same gauge as us, adding 12 stitches to your cast on will give you 10cm extra width.
For extra length you can choose to repeat a section or knit more rows within a section. For example, repeating Section 1 as a blocky stripe in between other sections. As a rough estimate you'll need 140m per 32 rows.
There are 8 shades in the Stylecraft ReCreate Chunky range. To make it even easier for you I've put together Super Stripe Blanket Kits in 3 different colour combos. They include all the yarn you need plus a copy of the pattern. You just add needles - 6.5mm circular needle at least 80 or 100cm long.
To recap.
You can buy a Super Stripe Blanket kit here or in the Pittenweem shop.
Choose your own colours of Stylecraft ReCreate Chunky here and in the Pittenweem shop.
You can download the free Super Stripe Blanket pattern here.
Buy a circular needle here.
