Blanket #142

It is impossible for me to write at all regularly.  I mean to, I think about it and I plan what I'm going to write about, but things happen, and the blog has to take second place.  I want to continue, anyway, just to record what I knit.

And I continue knitting.  Blanket #142 is nearly finished - the knitting is; there is still an edging and fastening ends to be done - and I have not written about it.  This one is knitted in aran weight on 4.5mm needles again.  It suits the dark colours because a lot of my dark yarns are already aran weight, and previous blankets have tended to be uneven.  That is not necessarily a fault, it does have some charm.

In addition to the usual dark colours, black, grey, navy, brown there is red, burgundy, purple and some lighter blue.  The grey angora and some mohair makes it beautifully soft, quite unexpectedly because other recent blankets have not been so soft.  Neither the camera nor the photographer is up to producing good pictures of dark knitting.  The first is taken with flash and the second without.

The first sweater that I unravelled for this was a Monsoon picture sweater from the 1990s.  A number of these have already gone into my blankets, because I have enjoyed unravelling them.  This is the last one in the yarn store, and I hope it will be the last one I buy, because now I resent the time spent unravelling when I could be knitting instead.  And I want to confine myself to hand knitted garments in the future.  The yarn is nice anyway, 100% thick wool between aran and chunky weight.  The sweater is obviously hand knitted, and I can't help but wonder about the person who knitted it - how much were they paid?

The second is the next Kaffe Fassett garment.  This is a vest, Mosaic from the book Kaffe's Classics.  I admire this knitting.  It is in 4 ply yarn, and I would never have the patience to knit the one stitch borders between blocks of colour.  The size is impossible.  It is too wide and too short to fit me, and it does not fit him either, as can be seen from the photograph.  (Apologies for his lack of dress, but he arrived in a garish green t-shirt for the photo session.)  The vest chest circumference is 108cm but it is only 46cm long.

I did a lot of soul searching before I decided to unravel this.  I can't remember what persuaded me in the end.  I bought  the vest with the intention of unravelling it.  I do own it, so I decide what to do with it.  What else should I do with it?  I don't want to end up with a museum of knitwear.  Anyway, now it is done and it only produced 350gr of wool, albeit nice Rowan wool.