Mulberry is a circular baby blanket, knitted seamlessly in the round. The cabled leaf and berry sections provide textures that both you and your baby will love, and they’re offset by plain stocking stitch which adds a lovely drape. The pattern is easy to master and quite addictive, and because it’s worked from the centre out it’s fairly easy to adjust the size or knit right to the end of your yarn if you wish. Just a few short rows give the stocking stitch sections a nicely rounded shape, and also mean that you don’t have to cast off hundreds of stitches all at once!

The optional leaf edging is knitted on after the blanket has been blocked to shape, and uses around 168m/185yds of yarn, and makes a blanket 96cm (37.8”) in diameter; to make the blanket without the edge it will be 81cm (32”) and you will need 400m/437yds. (Since it’s added later, you could exchange the leaves for any other edging of your choice - icord or even a cable to echo the stems would be nice too.)

The pattern includes both written and charted instructions, so you can follow whichever you prefer.

You will need:

• one set of dpns, and a 120cm circular needle (both 4mm). It is also handy if you have shorter circulars available, so that you can move off the dpns as soon as possible (I used 40cm, 80cm and then 120cm).
• straight needles (4mm) for the leaf edging
• a cable needle
• 7 stitch markers, plus 1 of a different type/colour to mark the start/end of your round

8/6/13 - the pdf has been updated to fix the mistake in row 6 of the leaf edging written instructions.