Safe at Home blanket

I designed the Safe at Home blanket in December before we knew that we would be social distancing and staying at home to keep ourselves, family and friends safe from coronavirus. I live in California and we got our stay at home orders fairly early, which resulted in my household size doubling as my two college daughters returned home. While adjusting to these changes and fretting about my elderly mom who lives in a retirement community, I continued knitting the blanket in the evenings to the accompaniment of news coverage on TV and admittedly some lighter fare about the making of models.

Buy the knit version of Safe at Home or Buy the crochet version of Safe at Home. You do not need to be a Ravelry member to purchase the pattern at these links.

This blanket was originally going to be included in my second book of geometric knitted blankets. The first book, Geometric Blankets to Knit, will be published in December of 2020 by Stackpole books (email 30blanketstoknit@gmail.com to be notified when it is available or pre-order here from the publisher, or pre-order at Amazon or Walmart). But as it was growing and I shared progress photos with a few knitter friends, they encouraged me to release it now because its theme really reflects how we are feeling about the sacrifices we all must make to prevent the spread of this disease and protect our community and loved ones.

I expect that most knitters will make this blanket from yarns in their stash because some LYS and online yarn stores have limited stock. The original blanket is made in 12 colors of Malabrigo Worsted that were leftovers from two blankets from my first book that Malabrigo graciously provided yarn support for. So in fact even the sample blanket is a scrap/stash-busting blanket. At this time Webs and LoveCrafts do have supplies of many of the yarn colors of Malabrigo Worsted that are called for, and if they are out of some colors, there are other colorways that can be easily substituted. This is a great yarn in so many vibrant and compelling colors.

The pattern went live on Ravelry and LoveCrafts two days ago and I have heard from several people that they plan to either donate their completed blanket to charity or raffle it off to raise money for those impacted by coronavirus. I am inviting these groups to use my Ravelry group and I know some of them are looking for yarn donations or would love to have you buy their raffle tickets. So please check out Safe at Home charity blanket thread to learn about and support these efforts.

I am really gratified by the positive reactions I have received to this blanket in the last couple of days and am looking forward to seeing some “blankets in progress” photos. The best part of designing is seeing my ideas rendered into finished objects (FO) by others and I am always impressed by how each knitter puts their personal stamp on it.