A while back, my friend and sometime model announced that she was expecting. She’s a pretty special woman, and so I made her a pretty special baby blanket. She loves grey, and stripes, and especially stripes done in greys. I added a pop of bright green to set off the border.

It was a pleasing thing, this blanket, so, with her permission, I wrote up the pattern. I called it Brightsides.

Brightsides is worked from the centre out with a slipped stitch texture and garter stitch stripes, ending in a garter mosaic stitch border. With mosaic stitch, you work with one colour at a time, slipping stitches in the other colour, so it’s an easy way to get a two-colour pattern without stranding. Worked in garter stitch, mosaic patterns create a deliciously squishy fabric.

This is one of those projects that is less complicated than it looks: if you can knit, purl, and work in the round, you can make this blanket. You don’t even have to read charts: all instructions are both charted and written. The pattern is written for heavy fingering/sport weight yarn, and I’ve included instructions for adjusting the size so you can make your Brightsides in a different gauge or size. For instance, I think it would look pretty sweet as a shawl.

For Whit’s blanket, I used O-Wool’s O-Wash Sport, a softly plied, machine-washable, certified organic merino yarn that comes in 3.5 oz/100g skeins of 306 yds/280m. Sweet mama, this yarn was nice to work with: so very soft, and such pretty colours. O-Wash Sport’s 4-ply construction plumped up during washing to fill in any gaps between stitches, which is most helpful with mosaic stitch patterns. The gentle plying preserves the softness of the merino, while the many plies help protect against pilling. (This construction won’t completely prevent pilling—that’s just what fine wools do—but it does add some durability.) The 32″ x 32″/84cm x 84cm blanket took 1010 yds/924m of MC (Appalachian Stone), 371 yds/340m of CC1 (Barn Owl), and 71 yds/65m of CC2 (Arrowgrass).

The pattern for Brightsides is available on Ravelry and Craftsy. The regular price is $5.50, though if you buy your pattern through Ravelry you’ll get 25% off, with the discount applied at check-out. The release week discount is effective until midnight Eastern Time, September 15. (This is no slight against Craftsy: I’d set the sale up there, too, if I could.)

So Whit, this one’s for you. Thank you for being such a lovely person and a wonderful model. By the way, I still think this would make a great album cover: