G. Knerd

Remember a few weeks ago, when I found out that the border for Wedding Blanket the First was maybe a little too big?  If not, you really should read it – it’s worth a laugh or two at my misfortune.  Don’t worry, I can wait.

Okay, so how do you fix a problem like that?  An extra foot in two sides of a one-piece border with mitered corners and a non-trivial pattern throughout?

Well, it starts with a small pair of scissors.

This part is not for the faint of heart, but it’s not as bad as doing fair isle knitting – you have to snip the yarn a row or two above where you actually want to join to, and then unravel slowly down to the desired place, picking up the stitches on a needle once you get there.

You do the same thing to the side that you want to join it to, kitchner the two sides together, and…

…voila!  Another nearly perfect join!

Then you do that at the other side, and suddenly it looks exactly like it did before, except it actually fits the blanket it was made for, and you have a couple of extra bits hanging around.

Now, question becomes: what, exactly, does one do with a couple nearly-one-foot long sections of border like this?

It’s really not a good idea to calculate how many stitches are in a project you’re doing.  Especially if it’s a large project.

My friend Erica is getting married in less than three weeks.  The Wedding Blanket II is for her (and her lovely fiance, of course), and…

…well, let’s just say that I’m likely going to follow tradition and present her with this blanket at some point after the wedding.  Unless, of course, I manage to find 50 or so hours just lying around in that time.

How did I come up with 50 hours?  Well, it’s all a bunch of math, and revealing all of my calculations would also reveal more than I want to about the pattern, so we’ll start with how many stitches are in one block in the blanket: 12,464 sts/block.

Then we multiply that by 16 because there are that many blocks in the blanket: 199,424 sts/blanket.

Then we acknowledge that I’m only this far:

That’s 10 blocks done, or 6 more to go, depending on how much you want to lie to yourself today.

Then we assume that I can knit at an average rate of about 0.5 sts/sec – it seems slow, but that includes things like casting on or picking up, and seems to be borne out by my experience on this blanket, so that’s 149,569 sec, or 2,492 min, or 41.5 hours.  Even assuming zero time for blocking and seaming (and we all know that’s really not true), that only gives me 8.5 hours to figure out the border for this thing.

Now, technically, it’s possible for me to finish the blanket in time.  I’d just have to skip work for a week or so, do nothing but eatsleepbreathe the blanket, and I could get it done.  On the other hand, I think Erica and her husband-to-be would rather that I stay sane, happy, and employed, even if it means their present might be a bit late.

A couple days ago, the Blanket Thief looked at me in a panic and asked, “Did we get [the bride and groom] a wedding present yet?”  He couldn’t understand why my only answer was to stare at him in disbelief.

In my last post, I mentioned that I was just about to start blocking the border for Wedding Blanket the First.  This was a somewhat momentous occasion, as it’s been months since I finished knitting said border, and at no time did I actually measure the in-progress or finished border against the blanket it was intended for.

Can you see where this is going?

It all started with a pile of border – when I was knitting it, it seemed like miles, but in retrospect it was really only several yards long.

The border got the customary dunking in water, was squeezed out, and then I laid it out in a rough rectangle on the floor.

This was when I started to get nervous.  This seemed…large.  In fact, this seemed like the size I had wanted the blanket to be, although I was pretty sure that the blanket was not, in fact, this large.

Laying out the blanket only confirmed my fears.  Somewhere, something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The width is about right, but the length?  Not so much.  No amount of fudging is going to bring that back into alignment, either, unless I want to make the long-edge border ruffled.

So there’s going to be some knitting surgery in the near future.  I need to extract almost a foot from both long edges.

After that, the slog to attach said border will commence.

Just between you and me, I don’t think I’m going to get this done within a year of the wedding.  Maybe we should make the new deadline 18 months?

I try hard to think about finishing even when I’m starting things.  One of the worst feelings when knitting is getting partway into a project and realizing, “Oh crap.  If I’d only done X when I started, I would have been able to do Y, which would have been virtually invisible.  But like an idiot I did Z, so I can’t do Y, and now that’ll be the only thing I see when I look at this project.”

You don’t have those thoughts too?  Just me then.

One of the places where obvious seams tend to drive me absolutely bonkers is within borders.  I don’t mind the seam between the thing-being-bordered and the border itself – after all, that seam is supposed to be there.  It’s the seam between where-you-started-the-border and where-you-ended-the-border that tends to get to me, which is why I spend a lot of time thinking about how to avoid that.

I was apparently spending so much time thinking about it, in fact, that I only remembered to take one picture of the entire process with Marissa’s Wedding Blanket border.  So for lack of pictures, I’m going to describe it, then I’m going to show you the results.

The border I decided to go with is a leafy edged border from Knitting on the Edge (an excellent book, by the way, although I’m convinced there’s an error in the particular pattern I chose).  It’s got a few stitches in garter stitch on one side to keep it straight, and on the other side leaves continuously form and taper off.  It looks really elegant, especially when executed in a cream colored yarn.

When I cast on, I decided that I would use a provisional cast on so that when I got to the other end I could join them invisibly with kitchner stitch.  And then I started knitting.

And knitting.

And knitting.

When I got to a corner, I figured out how to turn a mitered corner in pattern so I wouldn’t have to break there either.  And I kept knitting.

And knitting.

And knitting.

And eventually, after months had passed, and over a hundred leaves, and nearly two dozen feet, suddenly I was done.

Of course, I reached the end of the second ball of yarn exactly one leaf away from the end.  I was sorely tempted to just quit and fudge it.  The only thing that stopped me was the understanding that doing so would bug me until the end of time.

Now, you know all those instructions for knitting in the round that say “Join, being careful not to twist”?  And you know how difficult it always is, in that first round, to determine whether or not a twist exists?

You should try it with a varying width 22-foot-long knitted border.

I triple checked to be sure that I didn’t have it twisted anywhere and even though I’ve checked it twice since joining, I’m still not entirely convinced that there isn’t a twist in there somewhere.  But after checking and rechecking, I eventually decided enough was enough and used a regular kitchner stitch to join the beginning to the end.

Anyone want to guess what went wrong?  How about if I remind you that part of the border pattern involves garter stitch?

I ended up with what looked like three rows of stockinette within the garter stitch portion.  I quickly ripped that back, did a more advanced kitchner where one side ended up looking like purls while the other side stayed plain knit, and voila…

…we have a nearly perfect join.  A non-knitter wouldn’t even be able to find it.

Now, all I have to do is block it, seam it onto the blanket, and call it beautiful.  It’s like I’m nearly done (we’re going to ignore the fact that we’re talking about 22 feet of seaming, okay?)!

I just hope it’s not twisted…

When I decided that I was going to knit Erica a wedding blanket, I said there were a few rules:

1. Finish Marissa’s wedding blanket first
2. Finish Tristan’s cARGHdigan first
3. Figure out the schedule for knitting, so I would know when I was slipping

On the other hand, just because I decided to wind some of the Cascade 220 hanks doesn’t mean I’m actually starting, right?

As soon as I took that picture, I realized it looked slightly phallic, so I tried to fix it by reordering some of the blue…

And ended up with Yarn Leia instead.  Apparently my talents lie elsewhere.

You might be asking – why are there eight of them?  Well, I figured eight hanks would be a decent start.  The pattern I’m using is knit with four balls (two of each color) at a time, so with eight hanks it’s like I have two sets of knitting.  Not, you know, that I could actually use two sets of knitting at once, but…well, if I could, I could, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of sets, I then took four of them and put them in the bag from a sheet set – I love that it fits the yarn perfectly, has a pocket for the needle, and even zips closed.

It’s like having my very own blanket kit!  So exciting!  I can’t wait to use it!

Not, mind you, that I’m allowed to yet.  I still have miles to go on my other projects first…

…crap, I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to resist this.  It’s new and shiny!  Pretty please can I knit with the new shiny yarn?

A couple weeks ago, I got a lovely large package in the mail.  At first, I was confused, because the outside of it said it was filled with chocolates – I might have a bit of a weakness for chocolate, but I knew I hadn’t broken down and bought over a cubic foot of it.

However, I suspected that this was the yarn I’d ordered from WEBS – mostly based on the fact that WEBS is also located somewhere in the Northeast – and I was not disappointed.

I may have emitted some squee-ish noises when unpacking this box.  But can you really blame me, when I now had, in my possession, this lovely hank of Araucania sock yarn?

Or this, a simply divine soft and light Berrocco sock yarn?  I didn’t realize this when I ordered it, but it’s also made entirely of nylon and acrylic – Shruti (or any others of you who have an unfortunate wool allergy), you could knit/wear socks made from this….

There was also a cone of blank sock yarn – I’ve decided to try my hand at dying, and this will get me off to a great start.  I can’t remember if it’s one or three pounds, but either way I’m going to be making a bunch of one-of-a-kind skeins for socks.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep them or sell them yet – it might depend on whether I can part with them once I’ve fallen in love with the colors.

And, last but not least, the reason why I was ordering from WEBS in the first place: the yarn for Erica’s blanket!  We’re talking multiple pounds of Cascade 220, and I’m really loving the way the colors look against each other now that I’m seeing them in person.  They’re unique yet complimentary, much likely the lovely bride-to-be and her fiance.

Now, I know I said originally that I was going to wait until the first Wedding Blanket and the Blanket Thief’s sweater was done….but I’m pretty sure I’m not actually going to hold myself to that.  Would you be able to, if confronted with pounds of freshly minted Cascade 200?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Stoichiometry is the part of chemistry that involves calculating the numerical relationships between various things in a reaction.  When I was studying chemistry, it was always my favorite part, because it felt a little bit like alchemy – if you could find a chain of relationships between any two things, you could convert that thing into the other.  For example, although you can’t convert apples into shoes, both apples and shoes have a relationship with money, and so you could convert apples into money and then money into shoes.

I may be a bit of a nerd, actually.  If that’s a surprise to you, you might want to double check what the name of this blog is…

Anyway, I finished the swatch for the Wedding Blanket II, and I got Erica and her husband-to-be to pick out yarn colors, which meant that I was all ready to buy some yarn…as soon as I figured out how much I needed to buy.

So (avert your eyes if math makes you woozy)…

I started with 0.75 skeins of Cascade 220 and created a 10″ x 16″ swatch, or 160 square inches:

160 in² = 0.75 skeins Cascade 220

1 skein Cascade 220 = 213.3333 in²

I want to make a blanket that’s about 5′ x 6′, or 60″ x 72″, or 4,320 in² (NOTE: if you want to keep your sanity, never calculate how many square inches or number of stitches are in your current project.  That way lies madness.):

4,320 in²/(213.333 in²/skein) = 20.25 skeins Cascade 220

To account for the margin of error on my original weight measurement, the fickleness of the swatch, the whimsy of the Knitting Gods, and the fact that I’m using two colors, I decided to order 30.  I’d produce some kind of snappy remark about how there’s no way I’m going to run out of yarn now, but I’m smarter than that.  I’ll just posit that, based on my calculations, it would appear that I’ve probably procured enough yarn to be able to finish this blanket.

While at WEBS, I may have also procured some yarn for myself…but the Blanket Thief was sitting right next to me when I did it, and he totally nodded his head when I asked him if it was okay.  He might have been playing video games at the time, and it’s possible he wasn’t actually nodding so much as focusing on the TV, but that totally wouldn’t stand up in a court of law…

So it’s about time to get yarn for my friend’s wedding blanket (heretofore referred to as Wedding Blanket II), and I’ve already scheduled some tentative time to go to the yarn store with the bride-to-be and pick out the colors she likes.  However, before we do that, I need to figure out how much yarn to buy, which means I need to know how many square inches I can get out of a skein of yarn.

I dug through the stash and unearthed some random yarn – pretty sure this is Cascade 220, also sure this is not a whole skein.  I weighed it on the kitchen scale, though, and (assuming I trust the scale, which I don’t) this is about 75g, or roughly 3/4 of a full skein.  My plan is to knit garter stitch (as the pattern I have in mind for the blanket is pretty much pure garter stitch) until I run out of yarn, then measure how big that is to figure out how many skeins I’ll need for a 5′ x 6′ blanket.  I’m hoping I get at least a foot and a half per skein, but it would be even better if I get two or more square feet – we’re looking at a rather high yarn cost here.

Luckily, at least garter stitch goes super quick – after about an hour or so of knitting, I’ve got a 10″ x 4″ swatch.  As for how much yarn I have left:

You can’t really tell the ball has changed dimensions.  I’ve got a long way to go on this swatch (here’s hoping for 20″+).

Now that things are, er, winding down somewhat on the Wedding Blanket, I find that I seem to have lost my sanity.

No, it’s not just that I think I’m “almost done” with the Wedding Blanket.  Never mind that I’ve been saying that for over a month now.  There is a finite amount of knitting and seaming left to do, and if I keep working at it eventually it will get done.

Eventually.  Sometime soon.  Maybe.

But, now that it’s – ahem – coming to a close, I find that I think I’ll miss it when I’m done.  I also find that I’ve found the solution.

When I offered to knit this Wedding Blanket in April, I did so without knowing what, exactly, I was signing up for.  This time, I really can’t use that excuse – and neither could anyone who reads this blog.  And yet, for the past couple weeks I’ve been anxiously waiting for a chance to talk to one of my friends about her upcoming nuptials and whether she and her future husband might also appreciate a blanket.  (Apparently, I wasn’t okay with the idea of either email, IM, or phone.  It seems that I believe Knitting Conversations should be in person.)

For the record, I never claimed to be sane.

To her credit, this friend of mine (who follows this blog) tried to talk me out of it.  She said it wasn’t necessary, that I shouldn’t feel like I had to, that she didn’t want to put me through that again.

What she didn’t tell me, though, was that she didn’t want one.

So I’m going to be making another Wedding Blanket.  I’ll be using an entirely different pattern this time (again of my own invention), so at least it’ll be new and different and exciting when I start.  It’s also going to be in color and much more modern and geometric, which should keep the interest as well.

On the other hand, it’s also going to be pretty much entirely garter-stitch.  At least it’ll be wool.

I am putting some rules in place, though.  Before I start on the new blanket, I have to finish the Blanket Thief‘s cARGHdigan.  I have to draw up a concrete schedule at the beginning, so I’ll be able to tell from the start whether or not I’ll make it on time.  And I’ll be more willing to let the deadline slip and embrace this concept of wedding-presents-that-happen-when-they-happen.

Now, I just have to figure out how I’m going to post pictures and progress here without giving away too much about what it looks like.  Hrm…blogging about a present is much harder when the recipient reads said blog…

Yesterday, I was trucking away at the seam while the Blanket Thief and I were watching TV.  After the last show, I looked down at my lap and proudly exclaimed, “I’m almost done!”

The Blanket Thief looked over, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Uh, honey?  Don’t you still have to make the border?”

“Not only do I have to make it, I have to sew the whole damn thing on as well.  And I have to do the other seam in the blanket.  But the point I was trying to make is that I’m almost done with this seam.”

I’m pretty sure he didn’t get it, but he decided to play along.  He just doesn’t understand that on a slog like this one, you really have to celebrate the tiny victories.