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
2 comments:
What a great stash reducer! It turned out so good too, well done. My weavers guild used to do an annual blanket collection for a group that I can't remember the name of. The blankets were used by rescuers and emergency personnel when working with children and teens. The blankets were comfort gifts that the kids could keep. That was a great stash reducer too.
Thanks. I was surprised when it dawned on me I was using the quilting thought process for adding borders and trying to balance the yarns the same way you balance prints and tie all the different elements together.
Was the group Project Linus? That's the biggest one I know about. That's what I thought I would do with this one after I have admired it a while and shown it off to everybody. : >)
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