Denny... Whereabouts in Cheshire are you? I'm in Warrington, I could have a go at teaching your DD if she really wanted to try! I've been a nanny for 15 years so pretty tuned in to littlies. My mum taught me originally when I was little, but then had a 'refresher' class for an hour about 9 years ago, and haven't stopped since! I've taught myself different stitches, techniques etc from books. I've almost never got something on the needles now.
Ellie... The blanket I've already made took weeks and weeks to finish, but had a fairly complicated pattern. It's about 90cm x 65cm and the wool (I prefer to use yarn that's mostly pure wool, cotton etc for babies as it's kinder to their skin, but it's always machine washable!) cost about £35.
It wouldn't take quite as long to do a blanket that was squares or stripes of diff colours or shades of the same colour for instance, as one with a pattern like mine.
Soooo......... it depends on what you'd like really, and how much you want to spend (you'd think that home knit stuff would be cheaper than shop bought, but actually the price of the yarn sometimes makes it more expensive!)
Tell me what kind of thing you'd like... how big, 'design' (i.e. just a massive plain knitted rectangle, or stripes, or squares or whatever... each of those would take the same a amount of time) and I could have a look at what yarn there is to choose from, then it would be the cost of the yarn + postage + something extra for my time (I wouldn't put an hourly rate on or anything cos that would turn out to be ridiculous!) then you can decide if you still want a blsnket or not.
Did you follow all that?!