My niece was born on October 3rd.  She is officially 3 weeks old.

And she is in fact the entire reason I decided to learn to knit.  There are just so many cute knit things out there for little ones, I could resist trying my hand at them.

One of her first gifts is a hooded baby blanket made from Misti Alpaca chunky yarn.  I found a pattern on Stitch Me Softly which wasn’t only pretty, it looked like a reasonable project for someone who had just barely learned to knit.

Here’s how mine turned out with A.G. Bear as a stand in for my new baby niece (she wasn’t born at the time of the pictures):

I made a few slight modifications to the pattern as I was going along.

One of the biggest changes I made was actually to the blanket tie cord.  Instead of the pom pom, I decided to make an i-cord loop on one side and then attach another i-cord to the other corner of the blanket with a weird increased knit blob that I made up.  Here’s what I did for the i-cord with attached teardrop:

Cast on 3
Knit i-cord until it measures desired length (6 inches or so)

The next row begins the increase for the teardrop.

Row 1: kfb, k3, kfb (5 stitches)
Row 2: k5
Row 3: k1, kfb, k3, kfb, k1 (7 stitches)
Rows 4-6: knit all stitches
Row 7: k2tog, k3, k2tog (5 stitches)
Row 8: Bind off all stitches

Fold your slightly oval shape in half and stitch your bound off edges to where your i-cord begins to increase, turning your oval into a 3-D teardrop.

Check back for model shots with my niece when she’s big enough to be wrapped up!