When my friend Hilary told me she was pregnant with her second child, I went a little crazy with planning a perfect baby gift. I landed on designing what should have been a simple baby blanket.

The Inspiration

Hilary and I have bonded over our mutual love of all things Geek. We had many meals that went on for hours, talking about Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever sci-fi, pop culture topic came to mind. Hilary also met her husband while she worked at NASA, and the two of them have shared their sci-fi love with their first child.

So I knew that when it came time to pulling together a baby gift package, I had to have a space-inspired theme. I included a little set of Star Wars LEGO for big brother, and the three Jeffrey Brown Vader-parenting books for Hilary and her husband to read to the kids. For the baby, though, I wanted to make something.

I decided to knit a baby blanket. But in my head, I was going to knit the FASTEST BABY BLANKET EVER—yarn held doubled, Berroco Vintage (worsted weight) on size 11 needles. Piece of cake, right?

Baby Blanket or Bust

I wasn’t counting on my starteritis that plagued the end of summer. Or the explosion of insanity that came from my job and made it so I could barely string three words together in the evening, much less actually knit anything. So this blanket, which should have taken me maaaaybe a week, instead took two months. But it’s done and it’s with Hilary and her new little one and I’m so happy to share the blanket (Ravelry link) with you all.

I made up this pattern. If you want to duplicate it, I’d be happy to write up general notes, but there is no pattern. I wanted to emulate those beautiful pictures of nebula, and while researching, the Lagoon Nebula really spoke to me. Pattern planning began before Hilary shared if she was having a boy or a girl, so I was looking for intense but fairly neutral colors.

Image from the European Association of Astronomy Education

I used the blue-violet color as “space” (I am not an astronomer so I’m naming things as I go), then the off-white color to represent the stars amidst the fields of bright blue, green, and purple gasses. I think they’re gasses. They could be tribbles. A mass of tribbles.

Actually I’m going with tribbles from now on. (Ashley is shaking her head at me.)

No Tribbles Were Harmed

Tribbles aside, this blanket was really easy to knit. Yarn management took some finagling, but once I wound the two colors into one cake, that became easier. My rough estimates say this took almost 1700 yards of yarn, and it’s roughly 36″ square (I think). The best part is Berroco Vintage is machine washable. After it was finished, I threw it in the dryer for a few short cycles after it was washed and it came out perfectly.

I love the way this turned out. Being a sort of “winging it” production, there are a few things I would want to do a bit differently on a second go-round, but I do have grand plans to make an afghan-sized version (why do I do this to myself). I hope Hilary and her family can enjoy the blanket for many years to come!