Round Blanket Knitting Project for Skittle the Cat

After I saw how much my cat Skittle loved sleeping on my son’s new Lopi wool sweater, I decided to knit something for her. I have plenty of bulky wool yarn, which she seems to prefer. To make it interesting, I decided to try knitting a round blanket.

The Vogue knitting book has all kinds of useful information and I recall seeing how to knit shawls of various shapes. One is knit into a circle shape.

If you decide to make a round project like this, be sure you have lots of various lengths and types of needles! As that circle progresses, you’ll need to go from DPNs, to 16”, to 32”, and so on.

Casting On and Using DPNs

I’m using size 10 double-pointed needles because my yarn is bulky weight (Quarry to begin with, and then Alafosslopi).

Cast on 8 stitches. I used the Old Norwegian cast-on, out of habit, but maybe a simple cast on would have been better. Move those stitches onto three needles – 3,3 & 2. Join to create circular knitting. I do this by swapping out the first and last stitches that were just cast on.

Knit a round on those 8 stitches. Now make increases in each stitch. Either do a backwards loop, or knit front and back. I did kf&b for my increases – mostly. I did use the backwards loop occasionally to try it out, but sticking to one or the other will probably look better.

Now you have 16 stitches on 3 needles. I used a clip on marker to mark the beginning of the round. (BOR)

cast on for round blanket — Cast on 8 stitches

My blanket will have eight sections and each section will be increased just before the marker for that section.

With 16 stitches on the needles, knit 2 and PM (place marker). Divide the stitches so that a ring marker will stay on the needle to remind you of each section. Each needle does not need the same amount of stitches. Count the BOR (yellow) as one of the section markers and you will increase just before it.

After the 8 section markers are in place, do an increase round. Make one extra stitch (kf&b or backwards loop, or your preferred method) in the stitch just before each marker.

Alternate a plain knitting round with the increase round and just keep going.

As the stitches expanded, I added a 4th DPN, and then switched to a 16 inch circular, ten a 32 inch.

knitting a round blanket — Separate stitches onto four DPNs.

four double-pointed needles for knitting — Separate stitches onto four DPNs.

expanding round blanket — I’ve added a new color

round cat blanket knitting — I’ve added a new color

Currently I am using a size 10.5 US needle that is 40 inches long and that will have to finish up this blanket. I don’t have any longer needles in this 10 – 10.5 size.

I’ll probably do a few more rounds and then bind off. The blanket is for a cat so I intended it to be small. The project was fun, and I learned something new.

The yarn used is a combination of Brooklyn Tweed Quarry (the grays) and Alafosslopi (white and black).

knitting cat blanket — Using up bulky wool to knit this round cat blanket.

Skittle’s blanket is washed and blocked to dry. I have the dehumidifier on in the bedroom so it won’t take four days to dry like the sweater did! The finished diameter is approximately 22 inches.