Friday 5 February 2016

Thick and thin yarn blanket C25

This blanket, C25, was part of my attempt to finish odd yarns that don't readily fit into blankets.  I had in fact already put this yarn in blanket #157, but didn't like it enough to continue.  It consisted of three hanks of blue black white yarn, thick and thin, unlabelled but I think acrylic.  The thin parts are so thin that I had to include a second yarn, and I used a navy acrylic that I bought for some purpose and now can't remember what.  There was enough anyway.




Since I had no way of estimating how far the yarn would go, I went for a log cabin construction.  It worked well.  I liked the texture of the yarn.  The acrylic disappeared nicely.  I stopped knitting when I ran out of the thick and thin yarn.









The edging was done using the Moda cotton ramie left over from the Sarisilk blanket.  The colour and thickness were both right.

Looking at the blanket now it is obvious that the blocks aren't regular.  I thought it was my tension that was at fault - I had started knitting more loosely.  I have since worked out the problem.  Log cabin generally works because in garter stitch one stitch equals one ridge.  For me it doesn't; one stitch is wider than one ridge.  This is why tension squares don't work for me.  If I change to a smaller needle I get the same number of stitches but fewer rows.  (So the advice to change needle size seems glib.  What do you do then?  I recalculate the number of
stitches.  I would knit a smaller size, if it were possible but I usually knit the smallest size anyway.)  The solution I'm trying with my current project is to knit a looser tension, ie larger needles than I would normally use.  I hope it works.

This blanket was a nice project, nice knitting, nice result.  Totally unnecessary purchase of yarn.






Thick and thin yarn blanket C25
thick and thin acrylic yarn, navy acrylic DK, cotton ramie yarn for edging
size 6.5mm needles
Tension:  12 st per 10 cm
Size 85 cm by 90 cm, 580 gr
Knitted 15 September to 23 October 2015