That's what I've been doing. Since I found out that Raj's sister is pregnant a couple weeks ago, I've been deep in thought about what to gift her. Knitted blanket ideas have been swirling around in my head and I've been making little notes to myself and [heart]ing designs on ravelry. Today I made some sketches of what I envisioned: a square knit from the center out with three different lace motifs--flowers, leaves and waves. Then I went to the yarn store.
I had asked one of Raj's cousins about colors for Indian babies. In India, it's illegal to determine gender before birth (according to Raj), so gender-neutral was a must, but I wanted to know if there were color preferences. Raj's cousin said she didn't think there were color preferences but "they all love bright colors." So I went in search of vibrantly colored yarn that would be appropriate for a warm climate (Raj's sister lives in Bangalore where it will be about 60-80 degrees when the baby is born in December).
I thought I would use a dk or smaller cotton or cotton blend, but nothing at the yarn shop was striking my fancy. Nothing, that is, besides the new Noro Taiyo Sock yarn, a blend of cotton, wool, nylon and silk. If I was a crow, Noro yarns would be my shiny thing.
I decided to throw out all my previous plans and use two colorways of the yarn to make a simple striped blanket. My new plan is to work from the center out, alternating colors every two rows with a jogless stripe, then work an attached border all in the darker color. So now to plan out my border....
