Yes, I know there are a lot of photos here. But I’m a slow and inept knitter and I spent three months of my life on something that is going to get thrown up on, so I wanted to remember it at its prettiest.

Lara is the daughter of a good friend and for many reasons this was going to be a special baby, so I knew I wanted to create something lovely for her when I heard she was on the way.

Mason-Dixon is always a source of inspiration so I adapted the Keepsake Blanket to be a solo effort. I thought I could do a centre panel composed of three log cabin squares and two side strips like samplers of different stitches.

Only problem: I had been knitting for less than a year at this stage and only knew two stitches: knit and purl. And, just quietly, I wasn’t too good at the purl. So off to the bookshop we go and within minutes I was the owner of “300 Stitches Every Knitter Should Know Or Face Instant Social Humiliation”. (I may be paraphrasing slightly but you get the idea).

I flipped through the book and came up with some rules. Firstly, no lace or stranded knitting so there was nothing to snag on little fingers or odd edges of a pram. Secondly, even if the output didn’t look like the picture in the book, if it looked Meant then I was keeping it.

I also have strong thoughts on the use of acrylic yarn with kids’ projects because of the fire risk, so I knew I had to use wool and it had to be machine-washable because, well, it’s a baby and God knows what’s going to be on this blankie soon. So I invested in some suitable girly colours of the trusty Luxury and sat down with 300 Stitches Or Consider Yourself a Big Loser, and got stuck in.

Well it took months but I got there in the end. I can’t tell you my thoughts on trying a three-needle cast-off about 8 times before it worked to join the middle strips, or the words I used when I ran out of the pink wool with 30 stitches to cast off on the last stripe of the last side of the border and had to unpick it and use the cream instead.

Lara’s Mum was very touched that I had made something for her, which I think achieved the Mason-Dixon goal of tears from the new mother. And I also got a photo of Lara on her very first walk in her pram, wrapped in my blankie. That caused a few tears from me too.