I know I’m only 1.5 skeins into a 12 skein project.
I know I will inevitably hate myself for starting this knit.
But, man, I love how this blanket is turning out. I love the feel of the eco wool yarn. I love the way the little lace “petals” grow and shrink as I knit them. I love how complicated the cable crosses are. (I actually use 2 cable needles for some of them. There’s probably an easier way to do them, but I can’t figure it out.) It’s a nice width, and I’m pretty sure my math will turn out to be right, and it’ll be the perfect size for a nice sofa throw.
In fact, I love this blanket so much, I’m going go grab my knitting and take advantage of the fact that both of the kids are sleeping (which I’m sure I’ve jinxed by typing that out).
If you’re a mathphobe, be warned. There’s gonna be a lot of math in this one.
Because I’ve got a pile of yarn and a plan. But not too much of a plan, because obviously that wouldn’t be fun.
So, I’m making a blanket- with a largeish gauge (I’m using US9s) in a lace pattern that I found… somewhere on the internet at some point in the past. I know that’s not great, and I would love to cite the original designer, but I literally have no information, except that it was a charted Japanese stitch pattern, probably from a stitch dictionary. Which one? I have no idea. (If you recognize it, please let me know and I’ll happily share the source.)
Anyway, I worked up a decent-sized swatch, I know I’m going to do this all-over lace pattern with a simple garter border, and I have a big pile of yarn. But how many repeats to cast on?
I could just guess, but that never ends well. Either I end up with a weirdly small blanket or I run out of yarn halfway through a king-size monstrosity. I’m aiming for a nice throw blanket this time. Big enough that the newlyweds can snuggle underneath it, but not so big that they will be celebrating their silver anniversary before it’s done.
I grabbed some tools. A pad and pen (I’m still old-school when it comes to math), a tape measure and my trusty kitchen scale.
First, I weighed the swatch: 30 grams. (I’ve got 12 skeins of 100 grams each, so 1200 grams of wool to work with.)
Then I measured the swatch. The whole blocked swatch was about 7.5x 9 inches, or 67 square inches.
So if 30g=67 square inches, I can do a little math to figure out that I can use my 1200g to work about 2680 square inches.
Then the next question is, If I have 2680 square inches to play with, how wide should the blanket be? In my head, the blanket is about 50 inches square… ish.
So I divided 2680 by 50, leaving me with 53.6. So, if I cast on 50″ across, I’ll have enough yarn for a 53″ long blanket.
Each repeat is about 3″ across, plus an inch and a half for each border, so dividing it out, that will give me 16.16. But, of course I can’t do part of a repeat, so I’ll round down to 16.
So to get my stitch count, I’ve got 6 stitches for the edges, plus 14 x 16 (14 stitches per repeat, 16 repeats), which gives me 230 stitches.
So now I’m off to cast on and cross my fingers that I did my math right!
I’ve been on a real “knitting from my stash” kick over the last year. According to my notes in Ravelry, I’ve knit about 20 projects from stashed yarn since quarantine began. I’ve really made the best of a bad situation, and I’ve made some things that I’m really proud of. (Also some things that I’m not proud of, but at least I used up yarn.)
Which is all well and good.
But there’s nothing like getting a big order of brand new yarn in the mail.
And, y’all. What an order!
First, I ordered a big (big!) pile of Simply Wool Bulky in Wilbur. (It’s called Bulky, but really it’s more of a generous worsted or Aran.) It’s a lovely undyed old-school wool, in a nice grayish-tan color that goes with just about anything. This is going to be a big throw blanket with an all-over lace pattern for one of my oldest friends’ wedding this summer. (I don’t think she reads the blog, but if you’re reading this and you’re an old friend of mine and you’re getting married this summer… forget what you just read!) It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to get out there for the wedding, between the baby and the whole “flying on planes during a pandemic” thing, but I want to be there in spirit, so a big blanket it is! (Stay tuned for more details/progress reports. Hopefully.)
And the rest of the yarn is my favorite Provinical Tweed in Salsa Verde and Caramel to make a pair of Weasley-inspired sweaters for a friend’s two little boys. I love this yarn for kids’ clothes. It’s super soft and washes like a dream. They’re going to be so cute!
I’m glad I got the materials for two different projects- it’ll be nice to have a big, satisfying project as well as a couple quick little knits to switch between.
I’ve gotta say, it’s exciting to have a pile of brand new yarn waiting for me!
It turns out that I’m not great at technology. (A surprise to nobody.) I set up a cute little poll so that you guys could help me decide which buttons to use on my little brown stash sweater.
Against all odds, I managed to get the poll to go live. But, in true Allison fashion, I couldn’t figure out how to access the results except by voting myself, which skewed the results. Then, I wanted to check again. And again. I tried to vote for every button, to keep the results un-tampered-with, but I honestly don’t know what I did.
Anyway, long story short: I picked the blue buttons.
They’re cute, but they didn’t pop quite enough, so I decided to try something fun. Instead of matching my sewing thread to the button color or the sweater color, I went with bright red! It turned out so cute, I can’t stand it.
Too bad it’s way too warm my big kid to agree to wear a wooly sweater like this. Maybe the little one will be willing to try it on next year.
What’s your favorite finishing touch to add to a project?
On the Needles 