a knitted item!

Today is the monthly meeting of the Blue Mountains group of the Knitters' Guild of NSW and I am tutoring a workshop in no-sew grafting.

So I thought it would be a good idea to show some knitting!

Here is my baby wrap for Angels for the Forgotten. I started it in "feather and fan" (also known as "old shale") but I got bored so switched over to garter stitch.

It's interesting that the ball I started with on the left pooled but the ball which started the right side striped! Ah, the surprise of knitting with variegated yarns!

I knitted it in two pieces so the curves went the same way on both ends.

I thought the straight edges looked bland so I knitted two borders of feather and fan and grafted them on with no sewing - I used the method I will demonstrate in today's workshop. This is the same method I used to graft all 128 pieces of the Pinwheel Blanket.

I know there's a line across the middle (which hopefully is not too apparent to you). It happened because I grafted the wrong side with the right side so I have made a stocking stitch row where there should be a garter stitch row. I didn't notice it until I had grafted on the first side border. By then I had grafted 656 stitches so was reluctant to undo it and fix it.

Yes, I agree, it's not perfect but it doesn't affect the usability of the item and the baby won't care. In the end I decided that there was potential for disaster in trying to rip out the grafting and that my time is worth more than one line across a blanket. I could fake one in the other direction, but what would be the point?

a note to the Cruise Director

ETA: progress on my to do list is at the bottom of the post!

One of the followers of this blog has self-styled herself as the "Cruise Director" (hi, C!)

In the interests of keeping the ship afloat (so to speak), I bring my latest report on the progress of the Pinwheel Blanket.

The finished blanket will have 112 units (5" x 5") joined together to make 28 blocks (10" x 10").

So far I have joined 80 of those units into 20 blocks.

I then joined those 20 blocks into 10 pairs of blocks.

Four pairs are joined together to make a group of eight (seen on the left of the photo below) and six pairs are joined to make a group of twelve but the twenty blocks (8 + 12) have not yet been united.


Before I ran out of yarn, this was the pile of units I had knitted.


Because there is a mistake in the joining of two blocks in the photo above, and because I would have to rip out 200cm (80 inches) of grafting to fix the mistake, I have decided to let sleeping dogs lie. (Are sleeping dogs allowed to lie around on this ship, Cruise Director?)

The good news is that having made that mistake, I can now make a deliberate mistake and fudge one more block for the yarn I couldn't get!

So now I have to do the following to be finished by next Sunday:

• finish knitting two units which were started but couldn't be completed because of the absence of purple yarn (done - Sunday 24th July)
• join 28 units into seven blocks (done - Sunday 24th July)
• layout the units to see which two colours will work best for my fudge block (done - Sunday 24th July)
• knit four units for the fudge block (done - Sunday 24th July)
• join those four units to make one more block (done - Sunday 24th July)
• join the last eight units into four pairs (done - Sunday 24th July)
• join the four pairs into one large group of eight (done - Sunday 24th July)
• join the group of eight to the other group of eight to make a group of sixteen (done - Monday 25th July)
• join the group of sixteen to the group of twelve (done - Monday 25th July)
• sew in all the remaining ends (started - Monday 25th July; finished Wednesday 27th July)
• crochet a border around the blanket to finish the edges neatly (started - Tuesday 26th July; finished Wednesday 27th July)

Do you think I can do it?

Tofutsies finished! and the first of the Supersocke Cotton socks

This is an example of what I mean - this post was originally written on 12 October and has waited patiently in the draft folder for a week!

After two months languishing on needles waiting for the grafting [Kitchener stitch] the Tofutsies socks are finally finished. And so is the cold weather I think!! LOL

I wore the Tofutsies socks on Friday - I didn't like the feel of hand-knitted socks under the soles of my feet. They're knitted in stocking stitch - does anyone have suggestions? It never occurred to me that I wouldn't like hand-knitted socks; I've bought more yarn for at least another three pairs! What can I do?

I have also finished the first of my Supersocke Cotton socks for SSoS and cast on the second sock. No sss for me*!

*sss = second sock syndrome
SSoS = Southern Summer of Socks