Thursday, October 8, 2009

Stockinette, boring and not-so-boring


Here is a glimpse of my almost-finished baby blanket. I wanted to wait until it is totally done to post it on the blog, but since I saw the recent discussion of stockinette blankets, I wanted to chime in with my solution to stockinette-boredom: This blanket was knitted in the round, which means that although the stitch pattern was indeed a tad boring, it also got done very, very quickly.

I used a size 10 circular needle and combined one strand of mohair and one strand of fingering-weight wool. Every few rows I changed for a different fingering-weight wool as I had several shades of blue and periwinkle in my stash. I started with 2 inches in seed stitch, then went on in stockinette until the blanket was 40" long, and I reverted to a seed stitch border. (I know, that makes it longer than 40", but my blankets always tend to contract a bit once I launder them so I wanted to anticipate any shrinking).

After I bound off, I pulled out my "How to Steek" notes and carefully cut right at the end-of-round marker line. Then, I picked up stitches all along each long side to knit a seed stitch border, then a facing that will eventually cover the cut edges. I'll post detailed photo of this knitting surgery on my blog when I am done so you can all see how easy and fast the process really is. Plus I figure it is good practice for the day when I am finally brave enough to steek an actual cardigan or pullover, instead of a plain rectangle.

For now I am procrastinating on this finishing touch because I suddenly found my inspiration for the Youth drive. My project of choice is a pullover; I gathered a bunch of worsted-weight wools from my stash, mostly reds, purples, some greens and browns too. This is what I have so far:
Kiki Mariko pullover

I am following a chart I found for the Kiki Mariko rug pattern in the second "Mason-Dixon Knitting" book. This is a lot of fun and the color-stranding makes it very warm. I haven't decided what will happen once I get to the armholes however -- probably some solid blocks of color. We shall see...

8 comments:

GenKnit said...
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Bloo said...
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Bloo said...

Hmmm... somehow I managed to delete my post. Interesting. What I had posted was:

Hi Laura - I've been keeping an eye on your blog, since I would like to try this method to make a blanket some day, and so I'd love to read your description of the steeking. I have been making garter stitch blankets to avoid purling, but while they're nice and thick, they do take a while to make (especially since I'm using worsted weight. Maybe I'll have to start double-stranding).

Your sweater is beyond gorgeous. What a delight it will be for the lucky recipient! It will be treasured always, I'm certain! I look forward to seeing the completed sweater.

I put two parcels in the mail last night: a sweater and 5 pairs of mitts to go directly to a4A, and a blanket to elann.com. I have two more blankets half completed, but I should have plenty to time to get them in for the mid-November deadline.

Reed said...

Wow. Stunning results. I too am interested in seeing your steeking process.

Kathy said...

I agree. I've never done colorwork and it seems like magic to me!

Emma Burns said...

The blue blanket is so gorgeous! I need to remember to knit more things like that out of my stash, instead of the complicated (and slow!) multi-square blankets I've been working on lately. Beautiful! Thanks for the inspiration!

Cyn said...

What is steeking?

Judy said...

Here is a useful article on steeking http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring03/FEATsteeks.html

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