Fun Facts

• The finished blocked blanket measures 50 inches by 67 inches, or about 23 square feet, which is the area of skin the average adult has

• From start to finish the blanket took 88 days to knit, which is the time it takes the planet Mercury to revolve around the sun, or enough time for me to watch all four seasons of Sons of Anarchy from start to finish

• The blanket weighs almost 3 pounds, or 1346 grams, which is about the size of a baby born at 30 weeks gestation (yes, I am a labor & delivery nurse!)

• I used approximately 3,156 yards of yarn, which equals 1.79 miles of knitting, or 107 feet per day of knitting

• 22 skeins of yarn were used, at an undisclosed cost!

N.B.

• When you are assembling your vertical strips by doing a three-needle bind off, it would behoove you to use stitch markers around your six stitch horizontal black band so you can align them by decreasing as necessary within each square. Otherwise your horizontal black bands might not line up, and ripping back more than five feet of three-needle bind off is not fun, and is in fact actually demoralizing. Trust me.

• I washed all of my squares in Kookaburra (wool wash) before I started assembling them. It made the squares much softer and easier to work with.

• The 60 inch cable for my Knitpicks interchangeable needles was practically made for this project.

• I’m so glad I wet blocked the final blanket. I put it in the bathtub for a soak, let the water run out and gave it a squeeze. I then spun it in my front-load washer on low for two minutes which took most of the water out without any felting. I shaped in on a queen size bed and the blanket dried in about 12 hours with a fan on it.

Progress:

3/16/12- FINISHED!!! With 6 grams of yarn left over, phew! The blanket is getting a good soak and blocking tonight, then a photo shoot later on this weekend.

3/14/12- Three sides have a completed border.

3/12/12- Two sides of the border are done. My new goal is to get this blanket finished and blocked before I leave for spring break, March 27th. My carpal tunnel is flaring!

Discovered a massive error picking up stitches for the third side of my border. The three needle bind-off that I had do redo resulted in a row of stockinette, not garter stitch. Ugh! It is obviously too late to go back and fix, so it stays. It really isn’t that noticeable because the stockinette pulls in and hides. A non-knitter wouldn’t notice, but I sure do. :(

3/5/12- All the strips are assembled together, and I just have to knit a border for the blanket.

3/4/12- I think Noro & I are in an abusive relationship. After a little soak it’s so pretty and soft and I’m forgetting all of the horrible things that it’s done to me, and I’m thinking about our next project together.

2/29/12- I’ve put my squares together into four strips and will be knitting the strips together starting tomorrow.

2/21/12- Finished all of my squares! I will take pictures and block tomorrow. Taking a small break to knit some lace before I join them and knit the border.

1/8/12- Forgot a way- wildly inconsistent yardage…

1/5/12- Oh, Kureyon, how do I hate you? Let me count the ways…knots in every skein, underspinning and overspinning mere inches apart, and the pointy fauna that sheep roll in. But you sure do have beautiful colors!

1/1/12- Trying to finish this in time to enter it in the MoCo Agricultural Fair (August 2012). It’s taking about two days of knitting per log cabin square.