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.