Year of Projects- In which the knitting is finished, but some blocking is needed

Hurrah! The knitting is done on my Hemlock ring blanket, which means I have also finished the first ball of my year of projects yarn. I used about 50g from a second ball to do one stocking stitch round and the bind off.

For the bind off I chose an applied i cord bind off following the instructions in Knitty. I am pleased with the choice as it is much less frilly than the pattern bind off and it is quite fun to work, even so it got somewhat boring and I had to do the bind of in four sittings. It looks better than a plain bind off as there are several lines of stitches going across the work.

The big reveal is somewhat lacking today:

Blocking is definitely needed to make this look decent, but lace usually does. I am holding out on blocking bacause I need more pins and because I am planning to dye this. I don't know if I am going to keep it or gift it so the dyeing requires some thought. Currently I am thinking of dipping it slowly into the dye pot from the centre so the colour fades towards the edges, but I don't know what colour to go for, maybe greys. It will probably not reappear on YOP until it has been dyed.

This also means I get to cast on my next project so I am going back to look at my list of ideas and see what I fancy.

Year of projects- In which the blanket is still not done, it all gets a little nerdy and I need help choosing the edging

I have made progress on the blanket, but it doesn't look any different to previous pictures, so I thought it was not worth another photo. Making my P socks has taken most of my knitting time the last week, but I am approaching the end of the blanket yarn ball so there is not much further to go.

I have been taking stats (because I am a nerd), at the minute each round has 536 stitches, takes 22 minutes and 10g. That is 2.46 seconds and 1.019g per stitch.

I have 54g left, so should get another five rounds which will take me up to row 68 of the pattern chart. I am going to add a new ball to work one more plain round then work the bind off.

Which brings me to the choosing part. I used a length of scrap yarn to work a sample of the border as given in the pattern, and also cast off a few stitches with a typical bind off.

I think the pattern bind off is too lacy, having looked at finished projects on Ravelry it makes a frilly looking edge that I am not keen on. I am currently thinking I will work a plain bind off instead; as a bonus it is much faster. I have also considered a picot type bind off, but am not overly keen on that either. Any opinions?

Year of Projects- in which I have made no progress, but have taken a couple of pictures

The last week and a half have been spent on scout camp. I was helping to organise a section of the activities, so there has been no progress at all on the Hemlock Ring blanket. In fact I didn't knit on anything for over a week, which was probably the first time in almost three years!

The wonder of scheduling meant I could put blog posts up even when I wasn't here, but I did miss the various link parties, so I am happy to be back and blogging in real time this week.

I was asked for a close up of the centre of the Hemlock ring in the comments of my last post, I have tried to oblige. The centre section, before the featehr and fan chart is started.

The very centre

I enjoyed doing the large holes as it was a new technique for me. On one row you work a lot of YO one after the other, the following row you work several kfb into the large loop of yarn made by the YOs. It sounds complicated, but like a lot of knitting instructions if you just do exactly what the pattern says and it comes out fine (of course this only works if the pattern is well written, but this one is).

Next week I hope to be approaching the border, but quite a few rounds to go before I get there!

Year of projects- in which the blanket has reached the end of the pattern, but not the end of the yarn

The title is a bit of an exaggeration, but I am prone to that. The blanket has reached the yellow "suggested cast off for blanket" line on the pattern chart. There are actually another two pattern repeats on the chart, plus I noticed someone has writtne out a few more on their Ravelry project, so fear not, the blanket wil grow more!

Here it is so far, it is still scrunched up as the cable is a bit shorter than the edge (is it a circumference or a perimeter when it is a wiggly circle?)

You can see that the yarn ball has shrunk a lot, it now fits into my hand, just, but that is a lot smaller than when it was the size of my head. I weighed it, I have 126g left. Of course due to the nature of circles as it grows more yarn is needed for each round, so the fact I have more than 1/5 of the yarn left does not mean it will get massively bigger. There is probably an equation to work it out, I suspect it involves pi (the mathematical one, not the edible one), but maths is not my strongest subject so I will just keep knitting and when it runs out is when the blanket finishes (and yes, engineer nerds can be bad at maths, I am better with the edible kind of pie).

I measured it which it was on the floor.

I am currently at 18 1/2" from the centre to the furthest outside edge. For some reason I seem to want it to be 4' across, I don't know where this number came from but since each pattern repeat only adds about 1" I don't think there will be enough yarn to get there. Admittedly this is unblocked, which will probably add a bit more as the fan bit is very scrunched.

Next week we might be talking about edging, I may need your views on that as I can't decide between the fancy pattern edging and keeping it simple.

Year of projects- In which the blanket has grown even more and listing stash on Ravelry has its benefits

The Hemlock Ring blanket is growing, it is now officially a long way round, currently 440 stitches in each round! I have had to use a cable connector and join two cables together (I knew I bought them for a reason).

It is still not easy to photograph so here is a partial shot which shows that the feather and fan section is taking shape.

I have reached the point with the knotted ply. I wanted the blanket to be much larger, so I cut the yarn and joined the two ends with a Russian join, fortunately it is in the stocking stitch section so is quite well hidden.

I am going to keep working until the yarn runs out and see how big it is then use the Russian join again to attach a second ball and work the bind off.

I have been adding my Tour de Fleece handspun to Ravelry and decided I really should get better at listing my stash. I probably won't bother with photos for commercially spun yarn, but if I put it in I can link projects to it.

This has worked out quite well with my Year of Projects mystery yarn as I managed to find it on the database, which has given me details of the yardage and I can see other projects made from it. It looks like it will felt, but only if you get mean with it, so I can make the hat after all!

Year of projects- the post in which the blanket has grown and I did some maths

The Hemlock ring blanket has grown, I am well into the feather and fan section now but have got to the point that it gets a bit boring. It is ideal TV knitting though and I am trying to do at least one round each day.

Because of all my yarn winding to find a decent length for the blanket I ended up with quite a few balls of various sizes.

The ball band does not have any information on yardage so I measured out 20m (the remeasured and found it was only 19m), weighed it and divided the weight by the length. This gave the weight i g per meter.

I could then look through my patterns and find how many metres each needs and work out which ball fitted best. I have sorted out yarn balls for the socks, hat, crown and owl.



I am not totally confident of my maths (although it seems simple enough) as it has the cardigan needing about 900g of yarn, compared to the 550g listed in the pattern. This could be simply because of the different fibre or a more tightly wound yarn. I am going to make one of the other patterns and see if the ball has the correct amount before I start dyeing for the cardigan.

Year of projects- the post in which we learn about winding yarn and casting on

I spent Friday winding a lot of yarn. I wanted the longest continuous length for the Hemlock ring blanket so started winding from each ball until I hit a fault, usually a knot or a broken ply. I got in quite a tangle and didn't find a perfect length in any ball. I picked the best which just has one knotted ply. I am going to work up to it and see how big the blanket is then decide if I want to make a join so it can be bigger.

This may sound overly picky, but I think it would be hard to hide joins neatly in this project. If I have to do one a Russian join in a stocking stitch section will probably be the neatest option.

Decision made it was time for the cast on:

Pattern: Hemlock ring blanket
Yarn: Wendy undyed Aran

The pattern uses worsted weight and 6.5mm needles. This aran is on the thin side of aran, so close to worsted. I started with 7.0mm needles as I didn't have any 6.5mm, but decided the fabric was too loose for a cosy blanket (see above).

I am trying to teach myself to rip things out right away if I am not happy with them. Otherwise I spend more time on it then rip it out later, wasting more time overall. So rip it was.

I restarted on 6.0mm needles and am much happier. It is progressing nicely.

I have been enjoying this pattern, although I am not sure if it will be overly lacy for my tastes when it is done (I am really not a lacy type). I also know from making a pinwheel cardigan that the start is exciting and works up fast, but as it gets bigger each round takes longer and can get boring, so this will be a long term project. As a bonus there are a lot of plain knit rounds so it will make great TV knitting.