Tag Archives: blanket

It’s… FINALLY… Finished

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I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, but the wedding blanket is finally, finally finished.

I made it through 10 of the 12 skeins of Simply Wool Bulky, but couldn’t keep going. The blanket was just so big and heavy, I couldn’t keep going. It’ll make for a fantastic snuggling, but it’s not the most fun to knit on (my poor arms would ache any time I worked more than a row or two). So, I finally gave up, bound off and declared it done.

I even blocked it! That’s how done it is! I soaked it in the sink and spread it out in the basement (where the children and dog can’t get to it) on a clean drop cloth. (I know… such a fancy setup.) And, lucky for me, it’s been super dry here, so it blocked in just a couple days.

The blanket ended up roughly square, which is fine with me. I just love how it turned out. I even took it out into the snow for a few glamor shots.

It’s taken me 9 months since I received the yarn, and I’m only 7 moths late for my friend’s summer wedding. But, dang it, I finished this thing. And that’s what matters.

Now let’s see how long it takes me to get it in the mail…

Have you finished any big projects lately?

Long enough?

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I’m officially at the “Are we there yet” phase of this ding dang blanket. I’ve made it this far, but is it far enough?

And while every big project has this moment (at least for me), this blanket is giving me extra trouble deciding when enough is enough.

There’s a “ribbed” quality to this pattern that I underestimated when I was swatching, and I’m having trouble figuring out what it’ll look like blocked. For example, when I just lay the blanket flat, it looks long and narrow:

Surely, it’s ready to bind off, right? The goal is a square-ish blanket, maybe slightly longer than it’s wide, but I certainly don’t want a long, skinny blanket.

But then, a moments later with a little futzing, and suddenly my long, skinny blanket is short and chubby and could definitely use a couple more skeins.

I think with blocking it’ll end up even wider, which means I should do more knitting. (Which is not the conclusion I was hoping for.) But then, on the other hand, after it’s been used for a while, will it just relax back into its long, skinny shape?

I’ve got 2 and a half more skeins. I’ll probably do at least one more full skein (plus whatever I need to do to get to a stopping point). Then, I’ll have a debate with myself about stopping. And then convince myself that I need to keep going. And then I’ll keep knitting until I’ve accidentally run out of yarn, at which point I’ll have to debate about ripping back or ordering another skein to finish the project. What? I’m sure I’m not the only one.

What would you do? Call it, or keep going?

Invisible Progress

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I’m still chugging along on my wedding blanket (I’m only 5 months behind schedule now!) and it’s going well. I still love the pattern and the color and the yarn that I picked. In fact, I’m enjoying it so much that I’m thinking about getting some more of the same yarn and making myself an oversized, cabled, lacy sweater. But that’s another post.

I’m actually making so much progress that I’ve burned through two or three skeins since last week! In any other project, I’d say I was cruising. Two skeins is more than enough for an adult sleeve, a whole scarf, a couple beanies, or even an entire sweater for a toddler. Unfortunately, I’m currently in the “Black Hole” portion of my blanket. Which means, no matter how much I work on it, and no matter how much yarn I pour into it, it looks essentially the same.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love it. It just is feeling a little like treading water at the moment. But maybe that’s good- it’s giving me lots of time to daydream about my next project.

How do you get through the mid-project doldrums?

Back on the horse

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I pulled my wedding blanket out of storage the other day, and have started working on it again. It’s great! I still love it. The pattern’s just tricky enough that it’s interesting, but simple enough that I have it memorized (or maybe I’ve just worked it a million times, so it’s just gotten stuck in my brain). I love the gray-brown of the natural wool, and I love that it’s gotten to the keeps-me-warm-while-I-knit size. It’s all just lovely (and massive! Each repeat is about 4″ across).

Only one thing about it is wrong. The timing. Here’s the timeline for this project:

May: I bought the yarn.

June: I made the swatch and started knitting.

Early July: My friend had her wedding.

Late July: I stopped knitting the blanket because it was too hot, and it was late anyway, and I kind of just forgot about it, if I’m being honest.

October: I started knitting again.

Which means, if I were to finish this blanket today, I’d only be 4 months late. Unfortunately, I’m only about halfway done. So, it seems very unlikely that I’ll finish today.

Maybe it’ll be done by Christmas? Maybe it’ll be done by their first anniversary.

What’s the latest you’ve delivered on a knitted gift?

New Pattern: Call & Response Throw

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A new day, and a new pattern!

It’s the Call & Response Throw, part of the Knit Picks 12 Weeks of Gifting program, which means: it’s FREE!

I’m super happy with how this monster of a blanket turned out. The chunky yarn plus the squishy garter stitch make it extra cozy and extra snuggly- it almost feels like a weighted blanket! It’s exactly what I want to be under (or working on) on a cold winter night.

It’s constructed in separate blocks. Each mitered block (there’s 3 variations) is worked from the wide edge to the point, and you use intarsia to create the colored squares along the diagonal. The blocks are then all sewn together and a quick log-cabin-style border is added to finish the whole thing off. Super simple, but such an impressive finished product. Plus, because it’s worked modularly, it makes a great travel project, and is easy to modify!

Head on over to Knit Picks to grab your free copy of my Call & Response Throw today!

H.O.T.

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You know what my favorite thing to do is? Knit. You know what I’ve not been feeling like doing? Knit.

It’s hot. Like, hot hot. As I type this, my backyard thermometer says it’s 90 degrees. This is Seattle, so we are not prepared for this. We don’t have air conditioning. And it’s supposed to get even hotter over the next few days.

We’re pretty much melting. Nobody’s sleeping. It’s rough.

We’re hiding in the shade in the morning, hoping for a breeze, and sneaking away to the basement in the afternoon when even the shade is too much to take.

I did manage to get a few minutes of knitting time to myself out on the back porch this morning before the sun got too hot, which was lovely. But I gotta say, there’s nothing that’s less-compatible with 90+ temperatures than a big, cozy, warm, wool blanket.

Needless to say, this isn’t getting done before the wedding. Oh well. Maybe it’ll be a first anniversary gift?

What do you do when it gets too hot for knitting?

In Love

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OK, I know this is just the honeymoon period.

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).

What projects are you loving right now?

In which I do a bunch of math

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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!

Pattern: Parkside Throw

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I know you’re probably tired of hearing about this gosh dang blanket, but I am so stinking proud of how it turned out that you’re going to have to hear me out once more.  But this time, I promise I’ll make it worth your time.

Because I wrote up the pattern, and here it is for free!

IMG_1902This blanket was so fun to work on (sure it took forever, but It wasn’t the bad kind of forever)!  It’s a simple 2-row repeat (and one of those rows is just knitting), so it’s perfect tv knitting. It’s a great way to really indulge in your favorite worsted/dk yarn (though I highly recommend trying the madelinetosh Farm Twist– it was an absolute delight). IMG_1895 The simple pattern of the blanket lends itself to all manner of interesting stripe combinations.  I like the simple asymmetric scheme I’ve got here, but you could do even stripes all the way up, random stripes with scrap yarn, or maybe a big old rainbow!  How fun would that be?IMG_1848_adjustedAs written, the Parkside Throw is a generously-sized throw blanket, big enough for two to snuggle up with on the couch (or big enough for a single blanket-hog), but the pattern could easily be modified.  Add more pattern repeats for a larger bed-sized blanket, or reduce the number for a baby blanket or lap warmer.

And, if you start now, it’ll be big enough to snuggle up under by the time the weather starts to cool down.

Get the free pattern here!

Parkside Throw Pattern

It’sdoneit’sdoneit’sdone!

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I’m so freaking stoked about this!  THE BLANKET IS DONE!!

This is fantastic for 3 reasons:

  1. I’m only about a month late!
  2. I’m DONE and get to start new projects!
  3. It turned out so good!

I mean, look at this bad boy:IMG_1902Glamour shot!IMG_1895I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out.  It’s warm and squishy and the colors are freaking gorgeous (and really hard to capture.  The black has undertones of green and navy and ash gray, and the yellow is golden with touches of copper.  So gorgeous). IMG_1859It was actually a really simple pattern (which I have plans of writing up for y’all), just a lot of knitting.  I love that kind of pattern- simple enough for anyone to work up, but with a real impact when it’s done.  Honestly, the hardest part was finding a space big enough (and away from the baby and the dog) to block the dang thing!IMG_1890_adjusted

Phew! Now I think it’s time to make something little.