I may have mentioned before that my favorite charity to knit for is the Minnesota Visiting Nurses Association. They help new mothers and they like to bring a little gift along with them when they visit. An easy project to knit for charity is a tuck baby blanket. If you have DesignaKnit, make your design about 186 to 190 stitches wide x 450 to 460 rows long. Put a 1 x 1 border on the bottom, left and right and the top. Any tuck pattern will work in the middle of the blanket. You may need to adjust the number of stitches so that you get even repeats across. This one uses squares, both single and double tuck rows:
With electronic machines, it's a good idea to do a swatch--- not necessarily for size, but to make sure the tucking is working correctly. Sometimes, depending on your download to your machine, the tuck and plain stitches get mixed up and you need to do the negative of the pattern. You'll see right away if it's correct. If not correct, you get a tangled mess. Something to consider: tuck stitches that are double length stand out more than the single row tuck.
If you have a punch card machine, try something like this.
It has a built-in border when repeated across the bed. Do a dry run without yarn to make sure you have calculated the correct number of stitches to get the side borders. Adjust your stitches if needed. This pattern is 12 stitches by 12 rows. You can use your 1 x `1 punch card that came with your machine to do the bottom and top borders. Just switch between punch cards for that. Be sure to read the section on tuck stitch in your manual.
A nice, and easy edging (pictured above) to control the curl is to crochet the following: Do one row of single crochet around the entire blanket. Still with the right side of the blanket facing you, on the next row, single crochet in the first stitch. Chain 4 and single crochet in the same stitch. Single crochet in each of the next two stitches. Repeat around and fasten off. A mindless thing while watching a movie...
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