Basket Case

The sudden drop in temperatures has really encouraged me to spend my evenings knitting instead of sewing, it must be some sort of craft-related hibernation preparation! I promised myself that I would reduce my over-sized yarn stash before I made any more expensive knitting project purchases, so I decided to knit up a blanket to snuggle up in in the evenings. It is a nice easy basket-weave design, so plenty of mindless TV knitting. I quite like the slightly random outcome of the stripes, using up all my chunky acrylic yarn.

Here is the pattern, free to you my good friends, hopefully it all makes sense! Modified from my brilliant 1981 Reader’s Digest ‘Complete Guide to Needlework’, which has the best stitch guides, and is delightfully retro ;). I decided to use stockinette and garter stitch, as although this means there is a back and a front to the blanket, the basket-weave lies flatter as the weaves are a bit looser.

I knitted with chunky/bulky yarn on 6.5 mm needles, the finished size is approx. 50 in x 42 in (127 cm x 106 cm). The final size could easily be modified by changing yarn, or adding in more sections. I used about 8 balls of acrylic yarn (mostly Hayfield bonus chunky 100g), which is roughly 1,200 yards (1,096 m).

k = knit stitch
p = purl stitch
RS - right side
WS - wrong side

Cast on 160 stitches (to make the blanket larger, increase cast on in multiples of 8)
Knit 15 rows of garter stitch (knit every row), ending on a RS row - Forms first border

To form basket-weave:
Section A (repeat for 16 rows):
WS - k8, *p8, k8, repeat from * to last 8 stitches, k8
RS - k to end
Section B (repeat for 16 rows):
WS - k8, *k8, p8, repeat from * to last 8 stitches, k8
RS - k to end

Alternate sections A and B until there are 16 sections in total (or desired size)
knit 15 rows of garter stitch - forms border. Cast off. All done!

Let me know if you give it a go, or if there are any horrible mistakes in the pattern!