Scrappy Stripes Baby Blanket

I'm always trying to encourage people to get more out of their ribbing attachments.  Ribbers are great for a lot of things besides edgings, especially for making fast blankets and afghans.

Here's my latest project.  It's the Reversible Lilac English Rib blanket from my Best Baby Blankets book and I changed the pattern to do groups of 25 rows instead of 11 rows.  I had a cubbyhole full of baby yarn that was Group 3.  I didn't have enough of any one yarn for a whole baby gift.  I decided to stick to one side of the color wheel, running through lavender, pink, peach and yellow to choose scraps in a nice group, and this whole project took me about three hours total, including hiding all the ends and binding off the top edge by hand.

It's quite a bit pinker than the picture, at least on my monitor.  I like this banister shot, though, so you can see that it is thick and good-sized.

So, why do I like ribber blankets so much?  Well, here are some features:

• You can get a much wider piece of fabric using the ribber.  Now you have twice as many needles and you can do tucked ribbing, like this, which is VERY wide.
• The ribber makes endless variations of fabrics that are quite flat.  You don't need hems or edgings.  I don't even block - I like the thick, puffy effect.  
• Usually, ribbed fabrics are much thicker and warmer than single bed fabrics.  This one with all the soft baby yarns is plush and puffy.
• These blankets are FAST!  If you have your heart set on making blankets for charity, here's a wonderful way to increase your production and master your ribber.
• If you want to make one like this, well, you don't really even need reversible English Rib.  The stripes tend to hide the reversible texture, anyway.  You don't even need a pattern really - just yarn that does the stitch smoothly and an awareness that English Rib is going to come off the machine really wide.  I worked a swatch first to test the yarn, gauge, and needle arrangement, and then as I was knitting, I knitted a lot more length than I though was necessary because I knew it would grow sideways when it came off the machine.  
• I want to try this scrappy style in Full Fisherman Rib, because that will be crazy wide and extra thick.  I also think it would be smart-looking to ply up some thinner yarns and get a tweedy effect.
• I do have some minor variations in width in the afghan as I kept changing brands of yarn.  I think that's fine as long as you stick to the same group of yarn.  Mine was Group 3 throughout.  

Now I have a really soft, pretty blanket for a gift and most of the scrappy baby yarn off a shelf.  I didn't use it all up, but I used all but two cone ends.