Behold! A so-called “Indian blanket” that it took me about a year to complete.

Real “Indian blankets,” of course, –at least, the Navajo kind– are woven, not knitted. But this type of pattern is very popular in the United States, and has been for more than a century. You find it on clothing, bedspreads, purses … and knitting patterns like this one. You see, when the Europeans conquered the American Indians, all groups immediately started both intermarrying and borrowing each other’s ideas.

As an aside, this type of pattern also sort of resembles some traditional weaving patterns in Indonesia. Because all folk art, when you get right down to it, looks sort of alike. Having been made by humans and that.

So about a year ago, I bought this pattern, called “Mohawk Valley,” from the Vintage Pattern Store on etsy. Then it was time to acquire the yarn. This blanket is a mix of different colors from my stash; high-quality wool and wool-blend yarns bought both online and at a specialty knitting store; and cheap cotton yarns in the appropriate colors, bought wherever I saw them on sale. So the color variations are my own. This pattern would look really good in just two colors. Perhaps, one day, I’ll do one with a bit more color discipline … if I live that long haha!

You knit it in three strips, then sew the strips together. I started Strip #1 with scraps, and then I tried to roughly echo the color changes that resulted, in subsequent strips. I even made a mistake on Strip #1, forgetting to add a garter-stitch border between iterations of the pattern, and I faithfully repeated this mistake on the other two strips so that the length would come out the same.

Here is the blanket being “blocked.” I pinned it wrong-side-up on my bedspread, misted it with water, and let it dry. After this, I added a border consisting of five rows of moss stitch, because the edge tended to roll.

Despite its flaws, this blanket is basically priceless. I knew it would take me about a year to complete it in time for the recipient’s birthday, and it did. Here’s another close-up.