entrelac baby afghan/blanket

I knitted a baby afghan/blanket.  The goal was to get some yarn out of my stash.  The stash is 717 grams or 25.29 oz or about a pound-n-half lighter.  I wanted to use up all the Lion Brand Cupcake, not the greatest yarn in the world to work with.  The cut ends frayed A LOT as I noted in a previous blog post.  Another point of contention was the yarn was rated as worsted (4) and it was barely sport (3).  That was the weight of the yarns I used with the cupcake to get the same gauge.

I used one 6 oz skein of Red Heart Baby Sport (Crayon Print).  That was the variegated.  The rest was the Cupcake (Blueberry and Marshmallow) except for 5 maybe 10 yards of Michael’s Loops and Threads White Sport to get me back to the beginning of the round for the outside border of garter stitch.  I had about 18 inches leftover of the Cupcake Blueberry that I bound-off with left. Yeah!

 The blanket measured 52 inches square after washing and blocking.  A little bit bigger than I wanted/figured but not bad for a first project knitting a bias fabric. 

This is a close up of the border.  I knit the inside border of garter-stitch 3 time before I got something I liked.  What I did find out though was I had enough of the Cupcake to add an outer-border and bind-off so I guess the experiment in futility wasn't a total bust. ; >)  The Cupcake didn't like being ripped back that much either!

I re-knit the middle border twice.  I started with a 4 x 2 ribbing.  It was okay but nothing to write home about.  So I pulled out the diamond lace pattern for the Tappan Zee sweater and used that.  I got one and a half repeats before I ran out of yarn.  I had to redo the corners, as my idea about working the diamond lace pattern into the corners as I added stitches didn't work out so hot.  I ended up with solid corners.  I bet if I would get out graph paper and chart it, that it would have worked.  Sometimes I have trouble visualizing how to make it work.

While researching how to leave the stitches live when I finished the entrelac, I read a blurb/blurp that said you will need to increase your stitches by a factor of 1.3 to 1.4 to get the fabric to lay flat.  I had to increase by 1.4 to make gauge.  The big holes you see where I added the interior border was not intended.  I was slipping the first stitch so instead of binding-off the stitch I slipped it to the next needle and I think I should have knitted the first stitch when I turned the work to go back for that last row.  I will have to play with it to find out on the next entrelac project.

For a design-it-as-you-go project I think it turned out well.

Hope everyone is having a good day!

Judy

goings-on

Well, I decided to come up for air and post something on my blog just to let y'all know I haven't abandon it.

Sister Suzy is safely nestled in the other bedroom waiting for the first day of graduate school.  She's a bit nervous after the first day of orientation.  She thinks she may have bitten off more that she can chew.  Which I think is good, in that, she won't go into this complacent.

One hiccup is none of her books is in the university bookstore and the disbursement of student loans isn't until the third day after school starts.  However, she is not the only one and the professors were made aware.  There is some scrabbling in the background to loan some books until everyone has money to get their books ordered and in.

Got a crap load of junk in the dining room I need to go through...hang pictures on walls...quilt racks on the walls...books to put away and such.  Still got a crap load of junk in the storage room in Kansas to get rid of or find a place for here.  But that storage room has a lot less in it than when I rented it in November of 2013.  I hope to have the storage room emptied the next time we head back.  Two years is all the time I want to invest in storing stuff.  Time to let the stuff/junk go or put it to use again.

More later

I hope everyone is having a good day!

Judy