The FastDay Forum

http://www.deramores.com/deramores-knitting-yarn
I love these brights. They have a lovely wavy blanket pattern on their site too.
At the moment they are offering 15% discount on this wool.
I've ordered the pattern for a blanket but am waiting till I go back to the uk to order the yarn to save on overseas postage costs.
I love the colours.

I love Lucy's blog attic24 and have been following her for over a year now. I re taught myself how to crochet last year and made myself a very funky throw for my sofa. I'm halfway through doing another one for some friends of mine. I'm by no means an expert but I too love the cashmerino.

Knitpicks swish DK is great for baby blankets; it is soft and machine washable. Don't know about shipping to the UK.

I'm making a baby blanket called OWL obsession. Not looking forward to piecing it together but it is so cute!
http://www.etsy.com/listing/97686866/crochet-pattern-owl-obsession-a-colorful

Tdstephens60 no you don't have to pay to follow a blog.

Glad you liked the links, everyone! I am more of a crocheter than a knitter and I always ALWAYS turn to her blog for inspiration! Everything is so beautiful and colourful!

[Tracieknits]

I normally really like cotton for baby blankets I buy, but when hand knitting, cotton gets really heavy very quickly, so you need a very very fine gauge cotton if you're going that route.

I'm not a fan of acrylics myself. I figure if you're going through all of the effort of making something by hand, make it out of something nice that is worth saving and handing down.

A super soft, washable wool is probably the very best bet. In the states, it's possible to get lovely supersoft washable wools from sites like knitpicks.com. I'm not sure if there's anything similar in Europe, or if they ship to Europe.

ETA the last one I made was for a mom who was not going to determine the gender of her baby. So I went with colors she had a lot of in her house - a sage green, a cream and a light hazelnut color. I also did the wave pattern and the three looked very nice together. I also love the look of ombre in a wave pattern (dark, medium and light of one color).

Well, I talked to my mum on the quiet and she hinted that they have been looking at nursery furniture, prams etc, and they are very keen on a white/light wood/ pastel colour scheme. So, I have decided to go with machine washable, 100% cotton, in 'ice cream' colours. Not very pastel, but the colours of strawberry, banana, mint, vanilla etc, but still in the ripple pattern. I was worried about choosing pink, but my mum pointed out my brother has pink shirts!

Thanks for all your advice, I will try to post a pic when it's finished, if I can work out how!