There I was, happily making my crocheted Bright Baby Blanket.

And then my antenatal teacher said something about wrapping a newborn in a soft fleecy blanket. Cogs turned and lightbulbs lit, and lo, before I knew it I was embarking on a new project 2.5 weeks before Babe is due. And because keeping it simple is dull (!), why not add a big intarsia star to the bottom of the blanket? Not done much in the way of intarsia before? No matter. No pressure there, then.

Having made myself some knitter’s graph paper in Excel and designed (and redesigned, and then redesigned again) my star motif, I originally cast on 88 stitches using a 5mm needle. But - oh no - too slow! After a false alarm from the little monkey last week, I decided things had to speed up so I switched mid-knit to 6mm needles. Luckily, Snowflake is a very forgiving yarn (i.e. hides my bodges very well) and a few k2togs later to slim down my now increased gauge I was back on track and speeding along.

My new-and-improved pattern is as follows:

CO 73 stitches in border/star colour (BC)

Knit in st st for as many rows to fit the depth of border you want (I did 10 rows).

R11 (right side) k5 in border colour, then join main blanket colour (MC), twisting the two strands together for a hole-free colour change. K 63 in MC. Join a spool of BC and knit the last 5 stitches in BC.

R12 (wrong side) P5 in BC, p63 in MC and p5 in BC.

R13 (right side) K5 in BC, k63 in MC and k5 in BC.

Repeat rows 12 and 13 7 more times.

R28 (wrong side) Time to start the intarsia star from chart, using spools of BC.

R95 Repeat rows 12 and 13 until blanket is as long as you want it. I took this section up to R140, ending on a p row.

R141 Change main blanket colour to BC and k 10 rows st st. CO loosely using 8mm needles.