Wavy Rib Blanket

Back in June 2025 my wife asked me for some Father's Day gift ideas, and I mentioned reading Bob Nystrom's Consider Knitting post. She gifted me a beginner's kit with a few skeins of cotton yarn, bamboo needles, and patterns for making washcloths. I knocked out two of those in no time and am all in on knitting!

A few weeks later I was at Walmart with my daughter and we went to the knitting section of the craft area. I was immediately overwhelmed by the selection, and asked my daughter to pick out some yarn she liked, and told her I'd make her something. She picked out a pastel sparkle rainbow skein and asked me to make her a blanket for her Cheer Bear. No problem!

Four months and thousands of stitches later I've finished this project. I learned a ton about reading stitches, and both fixing and accepting mistakes.

There were so many times where I dropped stitches or did yarn overs or discovered other techniques. I'm still struggling a bit to visualize and read the stitches but I'm getting there. I can see early on where I duplicated a row which flipped the pattern so the wrong side became the right side for a bit. Towards the end I stayed up late one night knitting, did *something* off but the count was right, and just wove in a random loose stitch I found when binding off.

Once I realized the amount of time this project was going to take, I briefly tried Norwegian style because I appreciate the economy of movement, but at this point in time English knitting feels the most satisfying to me. I'm not concerned with productivity, and enjoy performing slow meditative motions that keep me grounded. Or at least, I'm trying not to be concerned with optimizing my knitting right now! It's hard to fight that urge as a coder.

On the whole I'm super proud of this blanket, and my daughter loves swaddling her stuffies with it. My next project is a blanket for my nephew! This time with a nice chunky yarn to take up more space in the world.

Used most of one skein of Lion Brand Mandala Sparkle. Cast on 98 stitches and 17 pattern repeats. Finished size: 17.5" × 16.5".