58” square

(Gauge doesn’t matter on this blanket, just adjust your needle size to make a somewhat firm fabric. Gather your yarn and knit until you’ve gone through half of it, or until it’s the size you want, whatever comes first, then start the decrease section.)

In the never ending effort to knit down my stash, I’m using one strand from a mix of fingering weight yarns combined with a strand of white Kidsilk Haze. Before I began I laid out my pastel colors and when I got a color placement I liked, I threw the lot in a basket and began to knit through the colors with a very informal plan. I love the watercolor effect it created. I started with greens, then blues, then moved to soft browns and grays. Next were the yellows, then pinks and then finally white.

I did not “fade” the colors. Adding the white mohair/silk lace and using all pastels helped the colors to naturally fade. When I ran out of a color I used the magic knot to add another color and then had no ends to weave in.

The knitting is entirely garter stitch which I love--love the look and love the squishy texture. It’s a mindless, de-stress kind of knit that I enjoyed very much. I’ll admit this is a boring project, but I actually like boring, and knowing that I was using up stash kept me going. Then about halfway through I realized it was going to turn out pretty, so that helped too. I had several other projects going on at the same time and picked this up when I couldn’t concentrate on anything more complicated. When you have several works in progress going on at the same time, it’s nice to have at least one mindless one .