Dark, dark

The new blanket #139 is dark.  I like dark colours, but they don't come out well in pictures.  I have knitted more than 30 cm now, but the picture is very similar to the one I posted last week.  The texture gives me pleasure every time I pick it up.  You can just about see the thick brown chenille cotton yarn, not the mohair.

The sweater I unpicked is hand knitted, in a 1980s picture sweater style, or from the early 1990s.  It is hand knitted, quite loosely, and it is large.  When I bought it I thought it was a man's sweater, but the flowery pattern made me rethink, and the smell of perfume.  It is large - 128 cm chest circumference.  It has not been washed - that is ideal for unpicking, because the yarn comes out nice and smooth after washing, as it did here.  I wondered afterwards if I really need black yarn for the blankets.  I preferred the way this blanket looked before I added the black.  It is a shame that the green and pink chenille yarns are acrylic, but I will use them anyway.  It was a pleasure unpicking it, despite having to unpick thorough fastening of ends and impossible side seams.  Sometimes it was done loosely, sometimes thoroughly.  The flowers are done in moss stitch, and the yellow middles are knitted, doubled in places.  The shoulders have been joined using three needle bind off and it was cast on using cable cast on, so it has been knitted by an experienced knitter.

My basket is progressing, but much more slowly than I expected.  It is just knitting round and round, and you don't notice any progress.  Now it resembles a large floppy hat.  The joins are hardly noticeable, and the reverse has come out very neatly, without trying.  I worry if the moss stitch sides will be solid enough to stand up.  In the pattern the sides were knitted in garter stitch and in doubled yarn.  I wanted to see what the three colour moss stitch would look like.  Now I have run out of the blue yarn, so I will have to work out when and how I add the burgundy yarn.