Lucky Log Cabin

This baby blanket was created after taking several cues from Cara.

I had found out a while back that a friend I would be visiting was expecting her first child. Of course, being a knitter, I had to decide to bring her something hand knit to mark the occasion! The trouble, of course, was what to bring? I wanted it to be something useful, quick to knit (I was working with a fairly severe time constraint) and I wanted to make use of yarns I already had on hand.

The mother to be happens to be a quilter, so I thought a Log Cabin blanket might be appreciated. Cara's post about a random-number log cabin blanket had niggled its way into my mind at that point to become a future project. I decided I'd bump it up in the possible project queue and checked to make sure I had yarn on hand that would be suitable.

As for the numbers, 18 is considered a significant number, being the number of years before a child is considered to be an adult. In addition, to some, the number 18 and its multiples are considered to be lucky. With that decided, off I went to the random number generator to create my sequence.


The blanket consists of 36 rectangles, each ranging from one to eighteen ridges in width with each number represented at least once. I still have a bit of yarn from each ball that I started with, though I had to curtail my plans for a Fibonacci inspired border sequence because the purple color was looking like it was running suspiciously low. The border features two edges with picot finishing in an attempt to make the blanket more suitable for either gender as it seems my stash of this yarn (easy to care for, now discontinued Lion Brand Cotton Ease) ran to the blue family of hues. It's a little bigger than a standard baby blanket at about 28-30 inches on either side. I didn't measure it exactly as I finished it just in time to stuff it in my luggage for a visit to see the parents to be.

I can't say I plan on knitting another full log cabin - all that picking up stitches and garter stitch had me questioning my sensibilities. Though I am toying with a combination log cabin/mitered square blanket...it won't happen for quite some time though as I think I'm all garter stitched out for the time being.