A children’s blanket with a dump truck worked into it – the sort of thing that becomes a particular child’s blanket rather than just a blanket in the house.
Worsted weight yarn. The pattern gives you two ways to work it: corner-to-corner following colour changes on a graph, or row by row from a written word chart. Both produce the same blanket.
Choosing between the two methods
Corner-to-corner (C2C) is worked on the diagonal in blocks, and most people find it faster once the rhythm is established. Reading from a graph also makes it easy to see where you are in the design, and to spot a mistake within a row or two rather than twenty rows later.
The written word chart spells out each row in text. If you find graphs hard to track, or you want to work without needing to keep a chart in view, this is the better option. It is slower to read but harder to lose your place in.
Try a small section of C2C on scrap yarn before deciding. It is an unusual construction if you have not met it, and it either clicks immediately or it does not.
Colour choice
The truck needs to stand out from the background in value, not just in hue. Photograph your yarn choices in black and white: if the two tones look similar in greyscale, the truck will disappear into the blanket however different the colours look on the shelf.
Yarn and care
Machine washable worsted, without exception. A child’s blanket that has to be hand-washed will end up folded in a cupboard.
Buy all the yarn at the start in matching dye lots. Colourwork makes a dye lot change obvious in a way that a solid blanket does not.
Managing the yarn
Colour changes generate a lot of ends. Weave them in as you go – leaving several hundred to the end is how blankets get abandoned within sight of finishing.
