Big, bold blocks show off your favorite team’s colors in this project for intermediate knitters. The pattern is written for two lengths and for two weights of yarn. Personalize your blanket or afghan by adding your or your recipient’s initials, your team’s name, your school’s abbreviation, or whatever you like! The entrelac blocks can be made without turning the piece for each new row using the knit-backwards technique, or they can be knit traditionally using knit and purl rows. The blanket is finished with a simple crocheted border.

Finished size: Short blanket, about 46” x 50” after blocking and with wide crocheted border; full-length afghan, 48” x 78” after blocking and with same border.

Yarn: A light worsted such as Cascade 220 Superwash or a DK-wt yarn. Using three colors, the short sports blanket pictured in Cascade 220 Superwash requires 5 skeins of color A, 4 skeins of color B, and 1 skein of color C; there is enough yarn left over for a matching hat! A full-length afghan in Cascade would require an additional 3 skeins each of colors A and B.

In the DK-weight, such as Fancy Image’s Superwash DK shown here (250 yds/3.5 oz), a full-length afghan takes about 3,500 yards total. Each tier of 4 blocks takes 185-190 yards, and the border about another 750 yards. The number of skeins you will need depends on the number of colors used and the length; if only using two colors, then 7 skeins of each color should be enough. However, if every tier is a different color, as depicted, then you need 7-13 skeins for the tiers, depending on how long you make it, plus three for the base, side, and top triangles, and one more contrasting color for the border (11-19 total skeins). If you have a lot of left-overs from previous projects, you could even do a scrap version with each block a different color. When two numbers are given, the first number is for the worsted-weight yarn and the number in parentheses is for the DK-weight yarn.

When changing colors from one tier of blocks to the next, do not put light against light or dark against dark, as the colors will not show up well, nor do variegated colorways show well if used in adjacent tiers—separate variegated colors with a tier of a solid color.