The Year-Long Blanket Slog, C'est Fini

It took months of planning, math skills I had forgotten about entirely, two excel spreadsheets, over 2 pounds of yarn, and a year of knitting, but it's finally done. May I present to you, the Maize and Blue Stained Glass Blanket:

It's 74 inches long, 53 inches wide, and very very warm. I developed the pattern using the long cabin knitting technique popularized by the Mason Dixon Knitting duo Kay Gardiner and Anne Shayne. If you too would like to knit one of your very own, I'm hoping to have a functioning pattern up for sale on Ravelry in the near future.

Last Christmas, my little brother got a bag of yarn and a promise, and this year, after buying yet more yarn because that bag was just not enough, I came through on that promise. The sketch I showed him last year has become a blanket. A big blanket, every stitch infused with team spirit.

Since finishing this giant time-suck of a blanket, I have already finished three hats (one for my husband, one for my son, and one for my brother-in-law) and am in mid-completion of a fourth (requested by my boss). Think of how many hats I could have if I had made hats instead of a blanket. It boggles the mind, really.

113 Rows In

The never-ending Maize and Blue Michigan blanket is my entire knitting life at the moment. This may be the reason I have not been doing as much knitting lately. I just finished row 113 of the M square. At row 112, the M split at the top and it was time to add two more balls of yarn to the intarsia pattern, for 5 total. I still have at least a quarter of the square left to go and this blanket is already taller than my nine-year-old.

To make things interesting in this sea of stockinette, I have decided to learn how to knit backwards. Knitting backwards replaces purling, which I'm not that fond of doing. It involves, get this, knitting in the opposite direction than you knit when knitting the normal way. When knitting, I move from right to left and the yarn wraps around the right needle, which is placed behind of left needle, like this:

When knitting backwards, I move from left to right and the yarn wraps around the left needle, which is placed behind of right needle, like this:

I'm still new at it, so it's slow-going. I figure if I spend the rest of this blanket knitting backwards instead of purling, I'll get pretty fast at it when I'm done. There's still a long way to go, but the intarsia is almost behind me, and that, that is cause for celebration.

How to Avoid Startitis

It's January, and as every knitter knows, there's a familiar bug going around. Startitis. It's the cold-weather-meets-start-of-a-new-year push we get to start casting on. We eye patterns, buy yarn, start multiple projects all at once.

I manage to avoid that last symptom year-round, but it's the hardest to do in January. I do it through a sheer force of will, the will to finish one project before I allow myself to start another. That's why I haven't cast anything new on this month, despite my repeated yearning looks at all the patterns in My Grandmother's Knitting. I requested this particular knitting book probably half a year ago from the library and it finally came in this past week. Not only are there all these wonderful stories about big knitwear designers' elderly family members and what they may or may not have knit, it also has a bunch of gorgeous patterns, including vintage gloves, a few interesting sock patterns, reinvented knitted slippers, and a very intriguing dishcloth. In particular, I'm itching to knit myself the Ice Skating Cape, which doubles as a very cute ruffled skirt.

I haven't cast on any of them though. I'm too busy, you see, trying to finish that giant blanket I started in December, the Family Plaid Woven Crochet Afghan.

Don't get me wrong, I've made a lot of progress. I've had the base grid finished for probably two weeks now. It's pictured above, with Kitkat at the top to show a sense of the scale involved. If I gave up now, it would make a lovely rug, but I'm going to finish this thing.

The next step of the plaid-creating process requires one 60-inch chain for each column of holes in the grid. For all of those who don't want to get a magnifying glass to count how many holes that is, this means 109 60-inch chains: 17 in light blue, 6 in white, 38 in dark blue, and 48 in green. So far, I have the 17 light blue, 6 white, and 28 of the dark blue done. That leaves 58 chains left total before final blanket assembly. Then I get to weave 109 chains through a zillion tiny holes and then weave in all the ends, two ends per chain, 218 total. What was I thinking?

I've been trying for 10 chains a night. If I keep at it, I'll have all the chains done before the end of next week.

Of course, I haven't forgotten all those patterns I've been eyeing. I'm looking forward to making another sweater for myself to wear to work, a celebratory full-time employment sweater, plus that delightful cape. First, though, my niece needs a cowl stat to combat a bout of Bronchitis, and my brother's best friend Johnny, who feels a lot like a member of the extended family, has requested that I make him a Michigan beanie too. There's still a lot that needs to come off of these needles before the month's out.