Once upon a time, I bought a HUGE cone of a thin orange yarn. It has its uses! My eyes don’t see the stitches too well when the yarn is dark, so I carry along this orange yarn, and all is visible! This is its second appearance … so far.

Then there’s the dark yarns - yes, plural. I had bought a heavy bag of mystery yarn at a second-hand store. After I’d rewound it and stacked the two cakes together, it turned out that they aren’t the same colours. Each is two ply with one ply being black. The other ply is a variegate. One ranges through reds and blues, the other has browns, greens, and flecks of other colours. What to do with two almost identical balls??

I decided they would work well together if I made mitred squares and alternated colours every two rows. That’s how I work stripes (see close up at: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/JessicaJean/blanket-with-...) in mitred square, and I added the orange yarn as a unifying carry-along - and to make the ‘yarn’ thicker. It works perfectly at blending the two different-yet-alike yarns together!

Centre photo is a poor scan; nothing even near the real colour.

The four central squares are 40 stitches on a side. The band of smaller squares are 20 stitches on a side.

On every row, the first stitch is slipped knitwise, and the last stitch is purled.

The central decreases are two consecutive k2tog on the front side - nothing fancy.

All cast-ons are crochet hook cast on, just because it’s easier to pick up stitches in it and still have the pick up edge match all the others.

All picked up stitches are picked up in the back loop only, which leaves a neat knurled-looking line … sort of outlining each square.

I change colours at the end of the return row - the back side without the decreases - by working the final stitch - a purl - with the new colour.