Golden Ratio Lace Baby Blanket

Back in January, Mr. H and I went down to his Mom's house to meet up with our eldest and and her husband for dinner.  It was their first free weekend in a while. Our FSIL (FavoriteSonInLaw)'s sister's wedding was New Year's Eve and, December being what it is every year, they were ready for a no stress outing. And they had been keeping a secret!

As we sat in Sr. Mrs. H's den, our eldest got up, handed me this ball of yarn, and said with a smile, "Now you can start knitting baby things."

Her sisters, as well as her newly-wed SIL, had been informed a few days earlier (which explained why my other 2 girls would not answer my calls for those few days and would only reply to texts: they were afraid they would spill the beans!)

I had already been toying with the idea of designing a lace pattern to make a scarf, but hadn't made much progress. Now I had a purpose!

The basic lace pattern came about over the next week. I think of it as 0, 1, 2 for one row, followed by 1, 2, 0. The 0 is a yarn over, 1 is knit 1, and 2 is knit 2 together. Then a blanket design began to materialize in my head.  The Golden Ratio has always intrigued me, so I started with that in mind.

I was so eager to get started that I didn't really plan well.  I cast on my stitches and started a bottom border before the final design had come together. My finished blanket is a bit different than the written pattern that is attached below. The center border is wider than it should be and the top and bottom borders aren't wide enough.

I had just gotten to the top border of the lower left square when we discovered that the baby is a boy. I thought that deserved celebrating for Mr. H's sake! I had some blue left from a project a few years back that would co-ordinate nicely with the mostly white blanket.

In the process, I discovered that I am not adept at intarsia knitting! My project was no longer portable and the 3 balls of twisting yarn  gave me a headache! Luckily, the blue box is relatively small, and I was back to a single ball pretty quickly. The instructions don't include any color changes. I didn't feel confident enough to guide someone else through that.

Now that the blanket is finished, I thought I'd spend a little time writing it out.

If you'd like the PDF, click here.

If you find any errors, or need clarification, please let me know. I'll fix or explain anything I can.