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Category: project – Blanket

Let there Be Blankets, Part One

The first of the two camel/alpaca/merino blankets is finished! I feel like I should be dancing happily around the house, and in my head and heart so I am. In reality however, I am curled up in delicious warmth underneath this first blanket because I had forgotten how light and fluffy and delicious it is, how warm and yet never hot, like a cozy hug.

The finished blanket is roughly 5' x 7', a little small for use on a queen sized bed for more than one person, a little large as a throw. I say roughly because there are a few minor issues. It is not perfectly rectangular because some of the individual pieces were not perfectly rectangular.

Apparently, when I knit this, I was not particularly meticulous and made many errors. This is not surprising as I knit it in a mad rush and I have never been a person who puts things off to the last minute nor a person who works well when backed up to a deadline. I can and will pull through when a deadline looms, but I never manage by best work. I am more of the slow and plodding type. I am also the annoyingly organized type who usually sees a deadline and automatically counts backward to figure out how best to utilize my time so that I do not end up working in a mad panic as a deadline comes near. This is how I got through college carrying the maximum allowable class load and never pulling an all-nighter while still volunteering and having a social life. It is pretty much the way I still function, except that every now and then a wild thought messes up the works. That was what happened with the original blanket. I bought the yarn in mid November and thought I could knit a light and fluffy blanket as a surprise Christmas gift for George, a California-King sized blanket, no less. Ahh foolishness!

Still, as much as I am proud, stubborn, and egotistical, as much as I do not like being reminded of my failings — who does? — I also wanted this blanket to be salvaged into something I would actually use. Putting the blanket back together therefore became an exercise in making do. Overall, my efforts paid off. This is not a blanket that will be perfect on display, but it is a blanket to be used.

Assembly because an exercise in compromise. Luckily the yarn I chose, Plymouth's Baby Alpaca Grande, and the stitches I chose worked well. I knitted the squares together using a three-needle bind off, done backward, or inside-out, finished with the wrong-sides together so that the decorative seaming ridge would be visible on the outside face of the blanket. The gray of the baby alpaca grande is not the same as the gray of the blanket itself, but it works well in this use.

For the border I used a four-stitch knitted on i-cord, which I ended up adoring. I even loved knitting it, and generally I find I-cord tedious to knit. I felt like I was knitting a fluffy cloud. I loved the soft loftiness, and the way the i-cord added structure without too much weight.

Will I keep the blanket forever? Who knows. I still have to assemble the second blanket. Before that can happen I need to order more yarn. I had guessed that the seaming and the border would take 3 100-gram skeins. I actually used 244 grams. If you think this means I only need two more skeins to finish think again. The number of pieces and the layout of the second blanket is different, and there will be 20 inches of additional seaming involved. That 20 inches of seam, using a three-needle bind-off, will take 11 grams of yarn, 5 more grams than I have available, so three skeins it is. It will work out, because the baby alpaca can be used with the assorted odd bits of leftover blanket yarn to make a scarf or shawl or something.

For now, this the lightest and warmest blanket I own. Soon I will have two. Someday I might have something that rivals this that I like better, but for now I am content and there is no urgent need that must be filled.

January 30, 2021
Ready, Set, Start….Blanket ReAssembly

This has been a week filled with the fiddly stuff, and I admit that motivation has not been high. Of course, as often happens, I spent so much time fretting about the annoyance I felt at things I did not look forward to doing that by the time I actually started the effort seemed absurdly simple.

A lesson I may never learn.

First there was the unknitting of miscellaneous blanket squares that I had decided not to use. Hoping to avoid the tedium of ripping a rather friable and snaggy yarn, I seriously considered seeking some way to seam them into a scarf and be done with it. Alas, darning and repair was also needed, and that required the original yarn. Unknitting it was. There is obviously enough yarn remaining that something can be concocted, perhaps a scarf after all.

Once again, darning and mending proved to be simpler and less cumbersome of a task I had anticipated. Yet another example of the dangers of letting those inner gremlins rule.

My reward for finishing up the fiddly bits was winding yarn. I do love winding yarn. I had three skeins of Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande in a dark gray that will be used to join the squares and create a knitted on i-cord border. The special bonus was that this was my first opportunity to use my new tabletop yarn swift. I retired my 30-some-year-old umbrella swift in December. The wood on the tightening screw threads which held the swift open were worn and no longer held and the mounting clamp did not seem to fit on any surface in the new sewing room.

I can attach my trusty old skein winder to the ironing table. I suppose this may be a bit of a pain as it must occasionally be removed for pressing. As I write this however, I am wondering if it would work better if I move it to the opposite corner, behind the iron rest, where it would be out of the way of the iron and still leave most of the pressing space free.

Here is a photo of the first two squares after being joined using a three-needle bind off. Because I want the join to be decorative I am picking up stitches, then doing the bind off with the wrong-sides together (rather than right-sides together) so that I get a lovely decorative ridge join between the pieces. The first two pieces were a bit of an experiment, because I wasn’t all that confident that the idea would work as nicely in real life as it did in my imagination. But it turned out well. And, it is fun and fast to knit.

January 19, 2021
Blanket Finished

I am posting a photo of a blanket I finally finished at the end of February. I had been waiting for a sunny day to take the photo. Ignore that little glare of sun in the lower right corner.

I can’t believe that I lost three months of my life on this, although I am happy to have done it. George so often finds blankets excessively heavy and when I saw this light merino wool and camel hair brushed yarn I immediately thought of a blanket. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the yarn; I am not good about keeping that kind of record, perhaps a good reason to keep a knitting log. Due to constraints of colors available and timing, as I naively thought this could be a Christmas present, (I saw the yarn 1 week before Thanksgiving), I knitted individual squares which I planned to join in strips. It still took me too long and I pretty much put most of my life on hold to knit this. Most of the strips were knitted by Christmas but I hadn’t joined them together yet. I ran out of the main yarn and used the original border yarn to double crochet the squares into strips and then together. On Christmas day it was arrayed on the floor but not fully assembled yet and I needed to purchase new border yarn as I was rapidly running out of the supply.

It is big enough for both of us on a queen size bed, roughly 88 x 92 inches. I would never have finished if I had to knit 84 inch long rows, but in planning I forget to think about how I would put it together. Sitting on the floor and crochetting, then weaving in ends, then sewing on the border was endless tedium. In fact knitting a 2 inch wide border was not fascinating either, I looked forward to the corners and that little bit of shaping provided by the miter.

In the end, I love the blanket, it is beautiful and warm and light and just invites snuggling. George thinks it is gorgeous which is gratifying except that he wanted to leave it on the floor so that everyone can see it. No way I want people traipsing over this lovingly but loosely knit blanket.

March 16, 2005