"For the Love of Yarn", an online knitting magazine, has now published my Cielo baby blanket pattern in their spring '07 issue. Oh the fame!

Seriously I did get a query already about yarn substitutions. I knit this with Elann.com "Den-m-nit" but that appears to be discontinued. There are two special effects inherent in this yarn: one is that it will fade like blue jeans over time as it's washed and used, and another is that it will shrink %10 to %20 the first time it's washed. Rowan Denim yarn behaves the same way and is widely available, thus it's a perfect substitution -- but expensive. Another less-well-known option is Twilleys Freedom Denim Yarn. I found a couple online vendors for this:

• Texere in the UK
  sells this for 2£/50g, which is currently about $3 US. Even with the shipping, for 13 balls (what the pattern suggests) this is cheaper than US sources.


• Erica's Yarn sells and ships in the US for $5/50g.

It should be easy to substitute other worsted weight yarns to get other colours besides indigo, although of course the faded jeans effect won't happen. Note that there are two main kinds of 100% cotton yarns, mercerized and unmercerized. Mercerized cotton yarns do not shrink, therefore behave differently than the denim yarns. Still, some of these can be wonderfully cheap and colourful, like Elann.com Sonata, which has great stitch definition and sheen and is $1.98/50g. It's also possible to use cotton blend or non-cotton worsted weight yarn for another kind of look. To substitute a yarn that doesn't shrink, the knitter just has to stop knitting the main body when the blanket is big enough, and knit the edging on as written.

Some unmercerized cotton yarns do shrink and others don't. Worse, unmercerized cotton yarn isn't always advertised as such. For example, I've used Mission Falls 1824 cotton and Blue Sky Organic cotton without any noticeable shrinking (and they're both great yarns though with the Blue Sky you have to live with some pilling and fuzzing). Knitter's Review confirms that Mission Falls 1824 cotton is unmercerized and various blogs say that the Blue Sky cotton is unmercerized. So just getting an unmercerized yarn doesn't guarantee that it will or won't shrink.