We just liked the word here - not sure Mrs. Tittlemouse had a blanket…

Anyway. We have taken a leaf out of our lovely friend, Kay Gardiner’s book, and made this blanket up of squares that you then knit together. She’s a bit of a diva at avoiding seams in garter stitch is our Kay, and this method of joining is one of her greatest in / un-ventions. As another homage to Kay, we rounded it off with an applied i-cord edging (she is the Queen of applied i-cord, after all), but just in case that’s too much for you she emailed with ‘fake’ i-cord edging instructions for us to use, too, once she’d seen the pictures. She is a true star.

You can easily alter the size of the blanket by the amount of squares you knit, so it would be easy to size this up. The pattern within the garter stitch border makes us think a tiny bit of the ‘cellular’ blankets we had as children, only without the satin ribbon edging.

The squares are knitted on 4mm nds, and then we found it best to go up a size for joining to stop the ‘seams’ pulling in, so you’ll need a couple of 4.5mm circular needles and a spare 4.5mm (of any description) for the joining.

We’ve collaborated with Town End Alpacas on this little collection of baby / toddler garments and accessories. Town End Alpacas is based up in the North West of England in the heart of the Lake District (hence the names for this mini collection). They produce yarn from their herd of beautiful alpacas in proper alpaca fleece colours and we have to say it’s some of the most gorgeous alpaca we’ve ever used, soft and warm and just as nice as cashmere.

8 x 50g balls of Town End Alpaca DK. This really is the most gorgeous alpaca we’ve ever come across, grown and spun within the UK by the lovely people at Town End Alpacas. It’s as soft and snuggly as cashmere. Ours is knitted in Light Mid Fawn.