A Bluestocking Knits

More Squares, and an Oval

Since I don't have to wait a week for the next square for the Granny Square Sampler afghan to come out, it may come as no surprise that my turnout is starting to blend together.  Sometimes a new-to-me square takes a while to work, then by the third one it just zips along and I might start the next one right away.  I think week 3's square is one of my favorites -- something about the simplicity of it, perhaps.  It's fun to have the colors changing on each round, but I really like the nearly-solid ones.

Week 4's squares are a subtle variation on the traditional granny square, with a little "V" shape in the second-color rounds.  I realized that it didn't show up very well with the dark green, so on the second one I used a brighter color.

There are two squares for Week 5, and to revel in that, they are nearly circles!  My Circles in a Square are at upper right and lower left in the photo above, and the other two are "Squircles" -- the first has only sort of embryonic corners, and uses the wonderful blocking properties of wool to mold it into a square shape, but the second, while very similar in the middle, uses further rounds of short single crochets in the middles of the edges, then slightly taller half-doubles on either side, with taller-yet double crochets to fill out the corners.  Simple, yet clever.

As for the oval, well, our bathroom mats are getting a bit ratty after, goodness I don't even know how long, possibly twenty years!  I discovered that I could order some truly gigantic balls of Lily Sugar N Cream yarn, and so I bought three, thinking of their Oval Bath Mat free pattern.  But it isn't really oval, is it, with the increases stacked directly on top of one another -- though I suppose "Elongated-Octagon Bath Mat" doesn't sound as appealing -- so I just sort of improvised for a while, moving the increases here or there, then when it started getting big, I put safety pins around the curved ends in the spots I wanted the increases to go, so that I could see them.  I'm pretty happy with the shape, not so much with the jog where the rounds end, so if I do another one in an oval, I will try a spiral.  Still, it's much more pleasant to look at the floor in the bathroom now!  And the balls of yarn were so huge that I'm pretty sure I have enough for at least one more mat!

Granny Square Sampler Afghan, Week 2

Part of the appeal of this sampler project is that working it a few pieces at a time, squares can be finished in an hour, and I did mine in odd moments here and there.  Week 2 asks for the traditional granny square again but this time with only three rounds -- the smallness of the square means that you can make quite a lot of them fairly quickly, and the request is for "10-14 squares" with the proviso that if you've chosen a ground color -- the cream Paton's Classic, in my case -- at least four of the squares use that color as the third round.

(So glad I decided to finish and block the squares as I go!)

I made the last batch and wove in the ends watching the first two episodes of "Great Canal Journeys" with Timothy West and Prunella Scales.  It's not only a lovely travelogue around Britain, of course, but a tender and moving story of a couple celebrating fifty years of marriage by doing something that they love, both of them long-time narrow-boaters, and at the same time coping with Pru's slowly-advancing dementia.

Granny Square Sampler Afghan, Week 1

In addition to consolidating my yarns this week, I was also inspired so much by photos of the Granny Square Sampler project at WiseCraftHomemade (I'm only seven-odd years behind the crochet-along!), that I dug out all of the odd balls and leftovers of Jaeger Matchmaker Merino DK I have, stuck into various corners of drawers and boxes here and there.  I knew there were quite a few, but seeing them all stacked together, well, there is quite enough for an afghan.  These colors are for the most part rather darker than what I was picturing in my mind, but a stash-buster is a stash-buster. There are also a few non-Matchmaker balls in there of similar weight -- why not?! -- so it's a collection of past projects and projects that never really got off the ground.  I can see two Azkaban scarves and a Forbes Forest, a bit of Doctor Who, and a Smeerenburg hat in there ....

Basically, the idea is to make a pile of granny squares, a different pattern every week, though the number (and occasionally shape!) of each varies, and at the end to lay them out like a jigsaw puzzle in whatever order they fit, and crochet them together into an afghan.  Blair suggests that at the beginning, in order for a collection of random yarn colors not to seem too daunting, you set a rule or two, like "Lightest color always starts in the center and gets darker with each round, or Blue and pink yarns never sit side by side, or Always end largest rounds with charcoal heather, or Use cream in every square."  Oh! that last one is lucky for me! --

This was a blanket from Knitting Without Tears, quite a lot of Paton's Classic Wool -- I remember starting it, but I have no idea now when that was.  Never mind!

The square for Week 1 is the traditional granny square, making one with 7 rounds and two with five rounds.  I can tell the moment that I pick up the Classic that it is heavier than the Matchmaker, but I'm hoping that in the small quantities used for one round in a granny square, it won't be too noticeable.  The Classic will also be the yarn I use to connect all of the squares together, but one of the beauties of this sampler project is that you can adjust the size or number of rows that connect all of the squares, so that gauge isn't critical.

I decided to weave in the ends and block as I go, so that I'm not stuck with three thousand ends to do -- tedium, thy name is weaving in ends -- which I'm already feeling was a good decision, as this alone was forty yarn ends!  Yes, one of the squares has only four rounds, it was my swatch and I decided to use a smaller hook, though to be honest, it doesn't look much different to me now, scale-wise!  Since it is pretty close to the same size as the five-round squares, I might be able to use it to fill in an empty spot when putting the afghan together.

Visit Blair Stocker's blog for the inspiration behind the granny square sampler, and a preparatory post about yarns and color selection.  There is also a Flickr group.

Big Bad, Blocking

I finished the Big Bad Baby Blanket the other day -- finally!  This is two skeins in the Jade colorway of Blue Moon's Gaea fingering weight, which according to my numerous calculations and recalculations -- the increasingly-desperate later ones on the fly -- would make a blanket about 45" square.  When I cast off, it measured 42" across and 39" high, but blocked, without my really intending it to, to just about 45" x 45" (114 cm).  I added 36 sts to the original number cast on, and also used a crochet cast-on, slip-stitch edge, and K1, P1 cast-off so that the edge is uniform all of the way around.

The pattern is of course by Lisa Shobhana Mason, and is in the first Stitch 'n Bitch book (2004).

The Gaea is very pleasant to knit with, though only in a few salient characteristics such as gauge is it much like the pattern's original Koigu KPPPM. The Koigu is dense and solid, where the Gaea is almost fluffy, quite cloud-like in comparison.  This I think will make a much lighter throw than would eight skeins of Koigu, so that is an added benefit in addition to the noticeable savings in price.  I'm a little disappointed in the color I chose, expecting from the name something like jade, where what I got is realistically more of a celery, but there it is.  I hope the recipients will enjoy it, and congratulations on their new home!

Five grams left!

Big Bad Border

Big Bad beginning of the end!

Big Bad Boo-Hoo

Big Bad Bungle

I realized around late-mid-December that I wasn't going to have this ready by Christmas after all, and so I slowed down knitting, and then I got sick after Christmas, so it wasn't going to be done by New Year's either.  I picked it up again a week or so ago, knitted steadily, and it seemed somehow as though the balls of wool were getting smaller and smaller, but the blanket wasn't getting any bigger.  How can that be?

And then I thought yesterday afternoon, "Uh-oh, it isn't my imagination.  This isn't going to make it."  It didn't.  After taking this photo, I got to the end of one ball, about thirty rows short -- all of the border and a bit of the main pattern. Blast it -- this was by weight!  I knitted until a little over half of the advertised 226g was left, so it should have worked, or at the very least gotten a lot closer than this.

(And, no, it isn't just the perspective, that ball in front really is considerably bigger than the other one.)

Big Bad Bisected

I reached the halfway point of the wool, by weight, the other day.  I had already decided, because, really, there is a little too much for me to do this week to devote enough time to knitting to finish the blanket by Christmas -- but this was really only a sort of over-achiever's goal, so I'm not particularly disappointed.  The house will be clean and ready for the next round of parties over New Year's -- which are potluck! -- and I will therefore have lots of time to just sit and enjoy the knitting!

(I know, I know, "bisect" implies cutting or dividing, neither of which I'm literally doing here, of course, but there aren't many synonyms for "halfway" that begin with "b"!  "Bifurcate"?  "Betwixt"?)

Big Bad Backtrack

Big Bad Boogaloo

Well, I'm not going to get over-confident here, but this thing's going at a cracking pace so far!

The two center sections are now exactly the same height as width, so it is decision time -- I will obviously have more yarn than what would make four perfect squares, because out of a 226g ball I have used only 56 (!!) to this point, at which in the pattern the stockinette is reversed, the knit side switching to purls and the purl side to knits.

So should I make rectangles instead of squares, and just keep going to the halfway point of the yarn (which I would be able to estimate by the weight of a remaining ball), or start again and make it wider ...