We are a people in the pursuit of making things with our hands & analog tools. Many of us enjoy it as a respite from our virtual worlds and digital displays. We shall share updates on our projects, craft resources, inspiration, & other news.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Knitted Chevron Baby Blanket Prep

I'm in the middle of a bunch of knitting projects right now but my friend is about to have a baby in two weeks so I'm putting aside my stuffed bear with one arm and half-finished stuffed carrot to make this crocheted knitted baby blanket.  (I must have been suffering a brain fart - I kept referring to this as a crocheted blanket but it's knitted!)

Since I'm still pretty much a beginner at this I wanted to make something with simple stitches so I could get it done in time.  I found this pattern for a Chevron Baby Blanket at purlbee and thought it would be pretty cute and soft.

I bought my yarn at fabulousyarn.com, which has a good selection and good prices.  If you buy a certain amount you can get a pretty significant discount, too.  I went with the suggested brand, Blue Sky Alpacas,  after checking reviews on Ravelry.com.   I'm pretty impressed with the variety of resources available online now!  If you don't have an account with Ravelry yet I recommend it.  It's a great way to find patterns and recommended yarns.  I also like to look at other people's finished products on the same pattern.

This is a snapshot of the yarns I'll be using to make my blanket.  I wound these all by hand, which was kind of a pain!  Some of them were more tangled than others to begin with so they took almost 30 minutes to wind up.



Someday I may invest in a swift and yarn winder.  Someday.  By until then, I'll keep winding by hand.  I followed the steps in this video, Winding a Center-Pull Ball.

I've now finished almost two colors swatches and here's the state of things now:



This was the first time I had to cast on more than 25 stitches, so figuring out how much yarn to leave was a major pain for me.  I first cast on 10 stitches, took them off, measured the length, multiplied by 10 and then started with that length.  When I got to the 100th stitch, I had a huge tail.  The instructions warned not to leave too long a tail because we'd need all the yarn to finish the swatch, so I measured the extra amount I had left, took it all apart, and tried it again with the original length -minus- the extra amount I had left.  Again, I was left with almost 30 inches.  Took it apart again.  AGAIN, 30 inches leftover.  This happened about 4 times and finally when I *still* had an extra long tail, I just decided, screw it, I'll just cast on more stitches and make the blanket wider.  To compensate I'm going to throw in another skein of yarn into the mix.

Good thing I'm not working on clothing, because this methodology won't work.  Figuring out the correct cast-on length is something I'll have to work on.

I also miscounted while knitting one row and had to take that all apart, which was not fun at 3 in the morning.  Maybe I shouldn't have been knitting at 3 in the morning.

Side Note: I was looking for an easy way to transfer photos from my iPhone to my computer without having to connect the two devices and so far I'm enjoying success with the Wi-Fi Photo Transfer app.  Any other suggestions out there for other fast, easy methods for transferring photos?

Stay tuned to see my progress on this project!


Labels: , , , , ,

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Bonjour
Est'il possible d'avoir les explications ?
Merci beaucoup
Martine
martine.julien84@free.fr

8:28 AM

 

Post a Comment

<< Home