Okay, so I absolutely love the monkeys on this pattern and bought it with the intention of knitting it as written. Just after I ordered the yarn though, I learned that the mom-to-be had decided to go nautical for the nursery. I graphed out a few whale graphics and decided it could be done, and ultimately decided to modify the pattern. The rest of the pattern was knit as written.

Some thoughts about the border - having read through many of the notes here, I used separate needles for each side when picking up the stitches and I found it to very helpful.

Thanks to my local knitters who kindly loaned me their US 8 needles so I could do this!

I solicited needles that were 24” or longer, but found that I could actually fit a side on a 16” (I was really trying to avoid having to go out and buy more needles) - this worked fine with no slippage on my bamboo needles. Might need point protectors if using Addis or similar slippery ones.

I knit a few rows using the separate needles and then switched to knitting from one large needle. The pattern calls for a 40” needle, but my stitches fit very comfortably on a 32”, which was the longest I had. When knitting the final row of the front border, I again split all the stitches on separate needles to pick up stitches for the backside border and did the same (for a total of 8 needles on the knit, and 9th to knit with).

I knit the final garter rounds with a US7, but I’m not sure how much that helped with the rippling in the border.

While cognizant of the measurements when I cast on, I didn’t really visualize the finished size (24” x 24”) and would have been happier with a bigger blanket, like many others have noted, but that could also be because my last few baby projects have been quilts, that run much larger. If I were to make this again, I would probably enlarge the pattern by 2 more columns and rows.

All in all, this was a fun knit, and I survived steeking without a hitch.