Two months on

Wow, I haven't blogged for more than two whole months. The explanation for that is that not much has happened.
 I've completed my Miró blanket, which I presented at my Aesthetics exam on in June. Even though it's only loosely in Miró's style, I think it looks okay and I think my teacher liked it. He'd probably never seen anything of the kind...
In the end, I got 80%, definitely not bad huh?





I've gone on knitting my mother's socks and they sort of ground to a halt for a while, but a whole afternoon of chatting and knitting at Zuiddag last week gave me the chance to finish them off.
The problem with these was that they progressed very slowly as other projects seemed to creep in front of them in the WIP-queue. Something that did just that is my new shawl, a 'more than a triangle' shawl, which I started after being inspired by Stiched-together's Blog week shawl with it's beautiful stripes. I have a disproportionate love for stripes, especially for black and multicoloured ones.

It's a simple garter stitch shawl that lends itself very well to striping. The only problem I had was that it got quite asymmetrical colour-wise as it grew. Because the yarn's colour repeats are a set length, the colour that I began knitting a garter ridge with was usually very different to the colour the yarn was when I got to the same place at the end of the row. Obviously this didn't happen on the other side. This problem manifested itself after about 15 colour ridges = 30 ridges = 60 rows. To solve it I then changed direction and purled for 10 colour ridges = 20 ridges = 40 rows. After that I was rather fed up of purling and changed back to knitting. It blocked out slightly asymmetrical in shape because even though the colour change tightens the edge, it's not as tight as the slip stitch edge I did on the other side. I'll have to do something about that when I knit another one, as I think that is very probable...


Another blanket that I have been working on is my green stashbursting granny square blanket. Because I sewed the center panel and didn't join as I went, I have to sew the next row of squares and then add a few rows round the center panel and then join it to the row of squares. I'll still have some yarn left after that and the blanket is hardly a reasonable size, so I'll have to decide whether to do more squares or to just do more rounds round the whole thing. We'll see.

Another stashburster I'm trying is a double ten stitch twist. I'm using the yarn I reclaimed from my frogged Printemps cardigan, together with all sorts of blues and greys. The colour rule is: If the sky can be that colour, then it's allowed. The first swatch I did with these yarns was a log cabin shape, but I decided against it because the striping in the yarn stops you from seeing the construction. I didn't really follow the pattern as I had already made a single ten stitch blanket for my Miró project. the biggest mod is that my center is a bit different to the original version. I also chose to knit one spiral at a time a keep the other side on a stitchholder. I think my yarn would get very tangled if if knitted both spirals at the same time... It still looks a little weird and I have no idea how big it will be in the end, but I think there's enough blue yarn in my stash to keep me going for a while yet.

Mnz