When my good friends Hanna and Mathieu were expecting their first child, the work in progress name was “Spruitje” (little brussels sprout in Flemish). Of course, Spruitje needs a harvesting blanket full of rows of carrots, cherries, aubergines – and brussels sprouts. This blanket has been designed not just to provide the baby with a cosy and cute blanket, but also to keep the knitter entertained throughout the progress by mixing a lot of different techniques. The blanket consists of rows of patterns, much like a vegetable garden – if you ever saw a garden including lace, cables and polka dots – or maybe they are not polka dots but corn, green peas, cranberries and lingonberries?

The blanket is made in the soft and warm mix of fibres from Vancouver based Illimani yarns – there’s plenty of lovely colours to choose from. Or just order the base colour and use up all your scraps for the colouring bits! You work the blanket in the round with a steek. After cutting the steek you pick up stitches all around the blanket and work one edge at a time and then fold the edges to the backside and sew fast, thus hiding the raw edge from the steek. I recommend that you add a nice fabric of your choice to the backside before sewing the edge so you can hide the floats making sure those tiny baby fingers don’t get stuck in the strands from the colourwork.

Notions
tapestry needle
2 stitch markers
Fabric
Sewing thread
Sewing needle