Finished Color Block Blankie

I finished the color block blankie before the baby was born! Wahoo! Of course, I didn’t actually get it in the mail until baby was over a month old. But I have two children at home and no car, I deserve a little slack. In the end, I liked all the colors, but blocking the squares didn’t quite get the goofy looking bumps and warps all out. I figure if they use it, the kid will stretch it to pieces anyway, and if they don’t, I shouldn’t bother blocking and re-blocking until I’m half crazed.

In progress:

I decided not to weave in any ends until I was done knitting, since I kinda suck at weaving in ends. It took me a few days to get all 208 ends weaved in, and after that, I’m an expert. The vines swinging from the backside:

The bumps and warps before blocking:

While knitting the border for this blankie, I found my circular needles looking like they had been chewed on by our dog, even though I’m pretty sure I did that the last time I was trying to man-handle the needle onto the cable.

Instead of spending $5 to replace my crappy Boye cable at Walmart, I knitted the border with it anyway. It was annoying getting the yarn over the connection, but I couldn’t justify spending any more money when I’d already planned my KnitPicks harmony interchangeable circular needles purchase. Now they’re here and oh so pretty! Preliminary review to come.

You may notice I haven’t included a picture of my finished blankie here. Well, the photos are lost in space and time. I take comfort knowing that the blankie is finished, is with the intended baby, and photos of it exist. When and if I find them, I will post.

One FO and one WIP

I love those acronyms. I especially loved the moment when I had a “UFO” (un-finished object) which went nicely with Stargate, my background knitting entertainment. I think I was snickering about that for a few days while the un-finished blankie dried on my makeshift blocking table. Word to the wise… when they suggest rolling up your piece in a towel before you block it, but you want to skip that step thinking you can just wring out enough water and it will be fine, go ahead and roll up the piece in a towel. It will save you a few trips up the basement and up the second flight of stairs getting a new towel to block on because the first one is sopping wet. I’ll have to figure out a different way to block the blanket I’m working on now, since it’s too big for the table I used on this blanket here.

This was my first blocking venture and I have to express my amazement at how lovely blocking made the pattern stand out.

But when it was dry, I had to give up my UFO, weave in the ends, and send off my FO (finished object) in the mail to my now 7 month old nephew. That blanket took a while to knit. Hope he’s still young enough to enjoy it!

Now I’m making incredibly speedy progress (for me, that is) on the color block blankie. I finished the previous blanket February 22nd and immediately began my WIP (work in progress). Now it’s a month later, and I’m two thirds done, as in I’ve knit exactly 66 out of 100 squares. Yes, I keep track. I didn’t get it done in time for the baby shower, which turned out to be at the beginning of March, but I should get it done by the time the baby’s born at the end of April. To my chagrin, the mommy told me at the shower that her husband insisted on a change of colors to blue and tan instead of green and brown. The half hour I spent laboriously picking colors, and the many crisis I’ve had since then, considering ripping out and restarting with different shades of green or brown, have all been in vain. I refused to start over after the blanket was over half done, but that hasn’t stopped my continual second guessing on the colors. And I did change one of the colors since I posted about them. I went with a lighter shade of brown.

So my final colors are:

I Love This Yarn buttercup

I Love This Yarn dark olive

Vanna’s Choice Baby sweatpea

Vanna’s Choice olive

Vanna’s Choice chocolate

And here is the blanket early in the process:

I’ve gotten the hang of mitered squares now, although I’ve many times forgotten to switch from the smaller needles to the larger ones. There’s a lot of places where it looks more smudged together than knit together with picked up stitches, but I think I’m getting the hang of that now too. I’m leaving all the ends to weave in at the end, after blocking, because weaving ends in is like some kind of voodoo that I don’t know how to do. They always end up popping out and my 3 year old daughter has told me that I’m making a blanket full of vines like on Tarzan.

So things are going mostly well with this project, except for the sad moment when I spent an hour working on a square, and realized I had knit it in the wrong order, and couldn’t pick up stitches on the square and get the diagonals on the blanket right. I had to cut it off, but couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I had the hubby do the deed. Very sad moment, and you can tell the hubby feels my pain.