Noah, knit me a blanket

God wanted a baby blanket for an impossibly tiny baby.

Remember forever ago, when I felt pushed to knit a beaded scarf and donate it to the Angeltown Food Pantry? It happened again.

I haven’t knit anything since Kiddo#4 was born. I’ve tried finishing a hat/scarf set which I’d initially intended for the same destination as above, but after the baby was born, I learned the impossibility of knitting while breastfeeding. Some women claim they can do it, and to them, I tip my hat. I cannot.

On the Sunday before labor day, I glanced at my yarn stash and saw my super-soft yarn and thought, I need to make a preemie blanket.

I knew it had to use both the blue and the pink yarn together. I knew which needles it needed (my 10 and a halfs, which I’ve never used before) and that it needed to be done soon.

Why? Who even knows. I emailed Ivy to ask her about the feasibility of the project, and she said what I proposed would be a really thick blanket. I thought about doing only one color, but that wouldn’t sit right in my head. It needed both. So I made a plan. It would be striped.

Remember, I hate weaving in ends.

I cast on using both yarns together, then went back over it using both yarns. Next I did just blue yarn, then returned back over it. At the end, I used both together for one stitch to carry both yarns upward to the next row, then did the next row using just the pink. And so on back and forth until I had a garter stitch blanket with alternating stripes. There are two wider blue stripes, but otherwise it’s simply blue-pink-blue-pink. (And it is actually square; the picture isn’t very good.)

After that, I did something similar to make the hat, casting on both yarns together and then alternating rows of blue and pink (single rows this time) and putting an I-cord at the top to knot it. Voila, two colors and no need to weave in ends except at the start and the finish.

Through all this, I had no idea where I needed to send it, or why. I’ve decided that my old church’s knitting ministry will be the recipient, since they donate regularly to hospitals. And why?

That’s a sadder thing. I’ve known two women who had a baby die and then had issues with the baby’s gender. The first woman was told she had a boy but ended up having a girl. Their little girl’s photographs are all of her wearing blue and in a blue blanket, and I know that was an added source of grief for the family. The second mother delivered her baby only to discover the baby’s birth defects were so severe that the gender was not immediately determined. They needed to do genetic testing to find out.

And maybe that’s the case for some family back in Angeltown. I prayed as I knit for the baby, for the family of the baby. Maybe the prayers will come through such that the baby won’t be born so early, or in such jeopardy. Maybe it’s for a baby who will die and a hand-knit blanket will be some small comfort to the parents. I don’t know, and really, it’s not my business to know. For now, it’s enough that God wanted a blanket, and I happened to know how to make one.