Wool gathering

In case anyone has missed it, Saturday 15 June will be the day of the Basingstoke BIG Knit!  You can find us on Ravelry, Face book, and Twitter .  In just two weeks there will be people all over Festival Place Basingstoke knitting.

Its part of World Wide Knitting In Public Week  At the BIG Knit we are planning to knit a blanket in a day and raise money for our local hospice, St Michael's.  We need lots of yarn and it's started to arrive from the generous knitters of the town

A bit of a jumble but I have begun sorting them out into colours

blues and greens

reds and pinks

 AND

yellows and creams

I'm beginning to see themes here.  It would be fab if we could make three blankets in these colours.  They are not going to be huge, lap rugs really so perhaps its doable...

If enough people turn up!

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD

I also found some knitters treasure in amongst the bags.  If  you have an eagle eye you may have spotted it already.  Some lovely old (1950s or 1960s, I think) Patons 4 and 3 ply 80% wool in some great colours.

As a spin off from the BIG Knit we are thinking of making a really fabulous afghan for the hospice to auction or raffle at their winter fundraiser.  This yarn might just be the right stuff to use

What do you think?

xx

c

Baby blankets

I think I mentioned somewhere here that I started to knit with a capital K when The Little Model was expected and I began with a blanket for her

Then last summer I blogged about my first reaction to the news that my daughter was to have another baby. I bought yarn - what else would a Knitter do? The yarn sat in my pending projects basket till after Christmas then I had to knit at 100mph

The pattern comes from Blankets and Throws to Knit by Debbie Abrahams, You might have read about the first blanket I made from this book earlier.  My intarsia technique improved as I went along

This square was easy, never more than three colours and three balls of yarn per row.  But intarsia can be tricky, it is easy to end up (as I have done) with a less than flat surface with small areas of colour bunching up and bumps appearing at the point that colours change.  The trick is to use a separate little ball or length of yarn for each colour change.  Even if the colour appears again further along the row you should not be tempted to run the yarn across the back of the work creating 'floats' as in fairisle.  I like to use long lengths rather than little balls as it makes untangling easier (you just draw the yarn gently through the cats cradle of colours one by one) but it does sometimes mean I have to join the yarn more often than is ideal.

I realise it's the height of knitting naughtiness but I knot yarns when I have to join them, leaving enough yarn to darn in the ends as well.  I hope that anything I make will be used and washed a lot (this blanket is machine washable) and I don't want to risk the work unravelling.

When changing from one colour to another the instructions always say to twist the yarns together.  I used to think this meant twisting tightly for several turns but this is how I ended up with bumps.  Just a single twist (imagine a row of dancers linking arms) pulled as tight as possible is better.

I have lots of yarn left and plan to make bootees... soon

The work is backed with cotton jersey.  This helps make the blanket warmer, of course, but also hides all the joins.  The lazy daisy stitches over where the corners of the squares met were a quick way of making the plain white backing look prettier but were also practical in fixing the backing to the blanket.

It was just finished in time for his arrival this week

xxx

c