My niece decided on the honeycomb blanket for her baby. She was living in Germany, as her husband was stationed there.  As they were visiting in the U.S., she called me to tell me that I had someone to make a baby blanket for.  She was going to have a baby!  Of course, at the time when she told me she was going to have a baby she did not know the gender.

Choosing the Pattern

After giving it some thought and searching many baby blanket patterns, I asked her what kind of design she would like, what colors and if she had a theme picked out for the nursery.  She wanted a gender-neutral look with a theme of Classic Winnie-the-Pooh, with muted colors.  Now that I had an idea of what I was looking for, I found some patterns that I thought were appropriate with her theme and sent them her way via messenger. Patterns I sent her included a feather and fan design; a honeycomb; Winnie the Pooh; a shell-looking pattern and an elongated honeycomb pattern.  She decided on the regular honeycomb pattern, which was written for two colors. 

Choosing the Colors

I had a small tag with Classic Winnie-the-Pooh picture on it. With the tag, I went to check out some yarn options.  I sent my niece pictures of several yarn colors. In addition to the colors I included the tag in front of it for comparison.  She liked 5 of the colors, all in Bernat Softee Baby.  The colors were Lemon, Antique white, Soft peach, Jacquards Tree Fort and Jacquards River Ripples. I decided to use the Lemon color as the main color, for the honeycomb pattern, as that was similar to the color of Winnie-the-Pooh.  The other colors I used in a pattern as follows: Tree Fort, Antique White, River Ripples and Soft peach, two sections of each, with a 15-row moss stitch border in the Lemon color.

Finishing the Honeycomb blanket

When I was finished with the main body of the blanket, I picked up and knit a 2” moss stitch border on each side.  This was the first time I had attempted this type of pattern and enjoyed the variety.  My least favorite part of knitting anything is weaving in the ends.  With all of the color changes (every 16 rows) there were plenty of ends to weave in. 

The finished blanket, woven ends and all, was very lovely.  I will make the Honeycomb blanket again, but with just two colors, as the pattern is written. Those would be the main color and the contrasting – two colors that stand out but look good together. This could be a solid for the main color and a variegated for the contrasting color or other variety.  I will only make this for a very special baby (like my niece’s sweet baby girl). 

Though this pattern looks a little difficult, it is just a series of knits, purls and slipped stitches.  Knit the main color loosely or the slipped stitches will pull too much. That will cause some puckering or tension issues, so pay attention to the tension throughout.