Another blanket

I have finished blanket #140 including fastening the ends.  I liked working with it; the mohair made it feel very pleasant.  I still think there were two many disparate colours in it, but since I'm limited to the yarn in the yarn store there is little I can do about it.  I was disappointed to find that although it was knitted in aran weight yarns it only weighed some 150 gr more than a DK blanket.  The blanket was some 10 cm narrower than a standard blanket.  I didn't do a tension square - I calculated on the basis that aran is usually 4 stitches per 10 cm fewer than DK.  Obviously my tension is closer.

I decided to knit my next blanket, #141, to DK weight, because I enjoy it.  I will do others in aran, to experiment, to get rid of more yarn even if it is only 150 gr.  This blanket is pink blue violet, and I keep thinking it has not come out very well.  From a distance I like it better.  Close to I like the look of plain DK yarns.

 

















The first garment I unravelled was this shetland vest, complete with label saying Shetlands from Shetland.  It looks like a traditional fair isle pattern knitted in authentic shetland wool.  Very pleasant it is.  I had to think very hard before I decided to unravel this, because it seemed such a shame.  But then what else would I do with it?  I bought it, very cheaply, in order to unravel it.  I tried it on.  It was the right size but it felt stiff and unpleasant.  So now it is gone, and the wool is very nice.

The second garment is another of my Kaffe Fassett garments.  I decided to unravel them in order to knit a blanket solely of yarn from them.  This pattern is called Big Crosses and it appears in Kaffe's Classics, but in different yarns and colours.  It says there that the pattern also appeared in an early Rowan book, so perhaps this one came from there.  I thought it might have been a kit, but Kaffe does not say anything about a kit - he says it was not initially popular.

I thought it was knitted in a DK and 4 ply yarn combined throughout, but when I unravelled it I found only two DK yarns.  The rest were 2 strands of the same 4 ply combined.  Most were a very nice shetland with a few ordinary wool yarns.  It was very well knitted, good tension and it looks good.  It was enornous - no chance of me wearing it at all.  The ends were just knitted in, so it was easy to unravel.  I like the colours and the yarns are lovely, but I'm having second thoughts about doing a blanket just with them.  Using just short lengths would end up with too many ends.  So perhaps I will use them in the standard blankets.  I will hold off for now.