Gretta's blanket

When we found out our close friends were expecting a baby, I knew an epic knitting project would be required.  Attempting my first baby blanket seemed appropriate.  This was a project many months in the making. Thanks to the healthy arrival of beautiful little Gretta (I met her yesterday and I'm totally in love), it is finally time to unveil on runty mouse!

I spent a lot of time on Ravelry, searching for the perfect pattern.  We didn't know if the bun-in-the-oven would be a boy or a girl, so I was looking for something gender-neutral - but nonetheless awesome - for this little kid.  I thought about the Log Cabin Blanket as well as the Moderne Baby Blanket - longtime faves from Mason Dixon Knitting.  But it was a pattern I had never seen before that really caught my eye:  Pickets by Jennifer Crawford (find it on Ravelry or KnitPicks).

A full rainbow!  All the way across the baby!

It was a pleasure to knit.  I LOVE garter stitch.  So soothing.  So uniform.  I chose a very practical acrylic yarn that would be fully machine washable, making the blanket actually useful to our friends.  The colours available were perfect.  *A full rainbow*.  My personal favorites are the bright blue, the yellow, and the purple.  Here are some photos of the blanket in-progress:

Even after finally finishing the blanket, I still felt crafty.  So I made this little card as well:

Finally, some modification notes and tips for interested knitters:

• You'll notice I dropped one of the "points" of each "picket" so that only one end of the blanket had "points".  I knew that my "increasing end" would not be symmetrical with my "decreasing end", so I just cast off the full width of the "picket".  I think it looks more like a picket fence this way, or maybe a set of crayons?  
• Regarding gauge, I knit 24 stitches across at the maximum width, and knit about 149 rows per panel (after the "point" was completed).  
• All through the project, I was dreading the final seaming of all ten pickets.  However, I was directed to a knitty tutorial by a fellow Raveler which turned out to be so easy and effective, I actually looked forward to seaming!  In retrospect, I would have left a "tail" at the end of each picket that would equal the entire length of the picket (plus about six inches) - it could then be used as the seaming yarn.
• Link to my project page on Ravelry