The next blanket

The next blanket, #201, contains more red, along with pink, beige and some green and blue.  There is also nice yellow and orange.

The nice red wool came from a bag of odd yarn.  I like bags where you can't see the content clearly because of the fun of opening it up and seeing what you've bought.  In this bag I could see some nice dyed sock yarn, and there was more good quality Lang sock yarn, very nice knitting despite the bright shades.  The red yarn was knitted into some odd shapes, intended as a bag I think.  It was knitted doubled, in a very tight tension in an aran pattern, painfully tight.  Intended as a substitute for felting?  I unravelled it and was surprised to find it completely straightened after washing, so it must be pure wool.  Here I included it as a regular red stripe, and there is more for another blanket.

The next blanket

This is the blanket, #200, where I learnt to appreciate white.  I have complained about the colour before.  In the process of rearranging my yarn I brought all the whites together, and gasped at the amount.  I decided to do a blanket in white only, with one strand of lavender sock wool.  After about 25 cm I decided the knitting was too boring, and I didn't like the result much either, so contrary to my principles of not unpicking blankets, I did, and reknitted it as a standard blanket, #200.  This was much more satisfying.  I did two regular white stripes, but here they are barely obvious.

The number #200 is not significant.  The numbering came about when I started entering the blankets in a spreadsheet in 1995.  Rows 1 and 2 were headings, so the first blanket was #3.  But before then I knitted some 20 blankets that were entered manually in a notebook, and it should still be around, somewhere.

Moderne Log Cabin blanket

I was intrigued when I came across log cabin knitting in the Mason Dixon Knitting book.  Achieving a traditional patchwork log cabin look would require fastening a lot of ends, and that put me off.  The pattern for the block I tried was rectangular and that threw me too.  Now I realise its convenience for blankets which tend to be rectangular and here the same number of blocks in rows and columns simplifies things.

I really liked the look of the Moderne Log Cabin pattern, the sleek look, the colours, the simplicity.  But it would be difficult to achieve with the variety of yarns that I had.  You would need yarn in the same brand in carefully chosen shades.  And, as pictures in Ravelry show, an even tension.  So I decided to use my standard three shade one row pattern.

First I had to upscale the pattern to achieve my standard size for blankets, larger than the pattern.  This involved knitting a tension square and adjusting for my tension.  That was interesting, and the plan I ended up with looked reasonable.









I chose the following yarns:

First an alpaca yarn unravelled from this Nicole Farhi cardigan knitted in an intricate lace cable pattern.  It was fun unravelling.  The yarn is beautiful and a pleasure to knit.  It turned out to be thinner than DK so I added a strand of a 4 ply brown wool.

The second yarn was Rowan Tapestry yarn unravelled from two charity shops projects.  One was a completed sweater and the second parts for an unfinished sweater.  The purpose of this yarn was to add interest because of the changing colour, but it was hardly noticeable in knitting, and the light sections jar in places.  I decided which blocks should use which shades, but you don't notice that either in the finished blanket.

The third yarn was some old Jaeger Matchmaker DK pure wool.  There was enough blue, so I didn't use the mauve.  I have always liked the brown blue colour combination.

Then I cast on, and started knitting casting on the number of stitches calculated in my plan.  The problem came after picking up stitches for the second block.  My garter stitch tension does not work as it should.  One stitch does not equal two rows.  The second block came out too wide.  I thought it was a fixed rule that in garter stitch one stitch equals two rows.  For me it doesn't.  I haven't noticed it earlier because it hasn't mattered, or, as in mitred squares, it has been fewer stitches.  Here it mattered.  I solved it by picking up one stitch per ridge, as usual, and in the first row did k8 k2tog.  That worked and won't show at a casual glance.

Perhaps it is my tension.  I selected needles, 4mm, that would suit the yarns best.  I am not going to swatch to get the tension according to the pattern, because what do you do when you can't get there after trying four five sets of needles?

This was going to be my project for picking up when I needed easy in between knitting and I was in no hurry.  It took even longer because of the time and effort it took to interpret my plan every time I came to a new block.  Otherwise I enjoyed the knitting.  Towards the end I abandoned the plan, and did what was easiest.  It had taken such a long time, it was a relief when it came to an end.  I did my usual border, pick up stitches, a three row garter stich border, crochet cast off.

I like the look and the feel of the blanket.  It is warm, heavy.  The colours are restful.  The difference in weight gave additional texture to the garter stitch, and the alpaca and Tapestry are so nice.  The join between the blocks does look clumsy in places.  Overall I am happy with it.

Moderne Log Cabin blanket

Pattern: Mason Dixon Knitting
Yarn: unravelled alpaca, 4 ply wool, Rowan Tapestry, Jaeger Matchmaker DK
Needles: 4.0mm Size: 125 cm by 170 cm
Weight: 1490 gr 
Knitted: 4 November 2015 to 22 December 2018

The next blanket

The next blanket, #199, is a standard dark blanket with black, grey, brown and navy yarns.  A lot of these yarns are familiar ones continued from blanket to blanket.  I like the restful dark ones.  This one has green for highlight.  The colours in the pictures are too light.

I unravelled this jumper, a cabled design in an aran weight yarn.  The label says W and that doesn't get you far in identifying the brand.  The content label shows that it is not BhS, and it gives no further clues.  The yarn is nice, very suitable for background, a good dark brown colour.  I enjoy unravelling cables.

Kaffe Fassett: Shadow Blocks blanket

The next yarn in line was from my large supply of Rowan Summer Tweed.  It is one of my favourite yarns, and there was a lot of it.  I wanted to knit intarsia because my previous effort had worked out so well, and I had in mind one of the simple Kaffe Fassett patterns, eg Tumbling Blocks.  I found several versions, and they were not so simple to knit with the various shades that I had.  It would take a lot of planning to get an attractive result.

Then I came across a new Kaffe Fassett pattern in The Knitter, issue 118.  This pattern, Shadow Blocks, was for one of the currently popular narrow throws for looking nice at the end of the bed.  It is wide and narrow.  I turned it round 90 degrees, recognizing that it would alter the proportions but I didn't think it would matter.

I worked out the number of stitches needed for full repeats and did a crochet temporary cast on.  I was so intent on getting the right number by repeat that I didn't realise that I had done one repeat too few.  I realised when I had knitted some 15 cm when I investigated why it didn't take long to knit one row.  Following my principle of not unravelling mistakes in blankets I continued thinking I would have to do a wide border.





The intarsia took some 12 - 13 yarns per row in my blanket.  The pattern itself, being wider, took over 20, without suggestion for managing that many.  You could use bobbins, but it would be awkward even so, and involve fastening numerous end which seemed a shame when a yarn would be used in one continuous sequence from top to bottom.

I devised a method that worked fine for me.  I put the balls of yarn in a shallow box, close together so they wouldn't have room to move, in the order used.  At the end of the row I turned the knitting carefully to avoid displacing the yarns in the box.  At the end of the next row I turned the knitting carefully in the opposite direction.  This way I had to disentangle yarns only every twelfth row when some yarns changed place.

I enjoyed the knitting very much.  The symmetrical pattern was a pleasure as you could always see what came next.  The yarn was a pleasure to work with.  I had worried about the colours but I'm happy with the result.  It would have been nicer larger.

I did the border in moss stitch in the three colours I had enough left.  I would have preferred a plain border but it was difficult to calculate how much yarn would be needed.

Shadow Blocks

Pattern: Kaffe Fassett, The Knitter 118
Yarn: Rowan Summer Tweed silk 75% cotton 25
Needles: 4.5 mm
Size: 155 cm by 120 cm
Weight: 940 gr

The next blanket

There is little to say about the next blanket, #198.  It is another in red blue brown grey colours.

One of the yarns is a Pingouin angora blend in a nice blue shade.

Account for 2018

Unexpectedly 2018 became the year when I stopped buying yarn.  More or less.  The decision was made, without prompting, on 1 May when I sorted the yarn store and the amount of yarn there became overwhelming.

I allowed myself a small allowance, of 100 gr per week, and I even managed to keep within it having 750 gr left at the end of the year.  Not buying became quite effortless in the end.  Looking at yarn I would think about what I would do with it; in most  cases I already owned similar yarn, and, if I bought it, it would end up in the yarn store for years to come.  Instead of finding nice yarn cheaply my objective has become to knit the yarn I have.

I continued to knit at a similar rate to previous years.  I used 22.4 kg.  For the first time, since I started keeping records, I knitted more than I bought, in fact twice as much. (I bought a lot before 1 May.)  It feels good.

I hope I can continue not buying.  The 100 gr weekly allowance adds up to more than three blankets per year, so I have reduced it to 75 gr.

Two pictures of nice yarn that I did buy, both American.