Blanket C6

I like knitting on the bus, but it needs to be very simple knitting that I can manage without looking down, so no counting or stitch changes. Crocheting hexagons was fine, but sewing them together took a long time, so I tried knitting these diagonal squares instead. Making them up still takes a long time.

Blanket C6 was intended as a child's blanket. The yarn is cotton so a full size blanket would be very heavy. I started knitting it 27 April 2009 and finished it 7 August 2010 - I did do other things inbetween. It consists of 56 squares and measures 85 cm by 100 cm, and weighs 860 gr. This is what the squares looked like.

I unravelled two knitted garments, a short sleeved top and a sleeveless pullover. The top was knitted in a putty coloured cotton. It was quite hard, presumably from repeated washing. The pullover was mercerized cotton, much more pleasant. The colour is a pale lavender. The third yarn came from unsuccessful attempts to knit something using a rust Jaeger Pure Cotton that I bought in a sale many years ago.

I laid them out in a second attempt, so it is not the same as the picture above, and sewed them together using backstitch. The seam ended up very thick and I'm not happy with it. When I knit the squares I slip the first stitch, and this make a nice edge, but not very convenient for sewing. Crocheting together didn't work well, either, but I like the crocheted edge around the blanket. Overall it is too heavy for my liking, but it did get rid of quite a lot of cotton yarn. The colours are odd.

My system for numbering blankets is complex and difficult to remember, but there is an order to it. The ordinary blankets are numbered by the row in the spreadsheet I set up in 1994 and have maintained ever since. Ordinary blankets knitted before the spreadsheet are A, and C are non-ordinary blankets. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of B is...

Next blanket

I'm eager to start posting, but a lot of work remains to be done on the appearance of this blog. My next blanket is no longer new; it is nearly ready. I measure it against my height - when it reaches from the floor to the my head it is long enough to lay down on the floor and measure with a tape measure. I aim for 180 cms. A few days ago it barely reached my chest, today it came up to my ears.

I wanted to make this blanket brighter by adding red. A little red has gone a long way, and now it is too bright for me. The picture is also too red because of the flash.

I used to unpick two jumpers per blanket. A few years ago, when I found I had too much unravelled wool I reduced it to one. Now the pile has gone down so much that I have increased it to two again, although I aim to keep the total to within the weight of a blanket, on average 1.3 kg. This time I unpicked the following two sweaters, both of them from charity shops.

A Whistles long line belted cardigan in red wool. This was easy to unpick, and the wool is lovely and soft, slightly thicker than 4 ply. I use it for every third row, double with another 4 ply yarn. It is because of this wool that the blanket is so red.

A Kim Hargreaves designed Rowan cotton cardigan. It had a label saying Kim Hargreaves for Rowan. although the standard of knitting wasn't that great. The bottom border was tightly and evenly knit, the top part with the golden swirls looser and more uneven. I wondered if it had even been knitted by two different people. But such a lot of work that has gone into it. All intarsia, and so detailed. It took a long time to unravel as well because all ends had been very carefully tied together, with hard knots, impossible to undo so I had to cut, cutting more than intended sometimes. The yarn is the Rowan Cabled Mercerized Cotton.

I am sure that I have seen the cardigan in one of the early Rowan magazines, and, when I have time, I will go back and look for it. I thought I could check Ravelry easily, but I can't find it there.