Another long break without writing. I have been doing some knitting, mainly on the new blanket, #143. This one is double knitting weight on size 4 mm needles. I enjoy knitting it. The light colours cheer me up. The yarns are good, too, several cottons and two mohair.
I unravelled a mohair cardigan for this. It was quite simple, in a broken rib pattern, very easy to unpick despite mohair's tendency to stick. Compared with the white mohair that I also use it seems thin.
I was going to unpick a second sweater, this crochet top by Chillipeppar. I started by unpicking the edging, but I changed my mind when I saw the yarn. It is very thin cotton, several unspun threads. I decided it would add nothing to the blanket, so it went to the dump. Now that I have got so much yarn in the wool store, I have less patience unpicking garments. It's not that I don't enjoy it, but it seems to take so much time when I could be knitting.
I have not got much further with my Geo Modern Throw. I finished knitting the 20 blocks. Then I washed them. Not because they were dirty, although some of the yarn may have hung around for 20 years or more, but because it seemed a good easy way of wetting them for blocking. I washed them by hand and spun them in the washing machine, in two batches. Then I placed them out on the spare bed, the wrong way round because the edges rolls upwards the right way round.
The blockss look much better now. The sculptural effect that I enjoyed has largely disappeared, and I think that is for the good. The thing that worries me is that the blocks differ in size according to the yarn used, and that it will it look strange when they are put together.
I have put the blocks aside for the time being, because I have started a new project, using some of the leftover yarn from the throw. So this is also chunky and now that I have got more than half way through it is beginning to annoy me. I am doing this on request and there is other knitting I would rather do. Knitting on 6 mm needles tires my hands and I can't do it for hours on end, so it seems slow.
