Overall thoughts

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Well, gosh! I have been wanting to make this project for ages! I fell in love with the pattern at first sight and purchased it. The colour way that the designer used is my all time favourite of pink and green, so that definitely played a part, but I also really like mosaic patterns - both as a technique to do and as a finished appearance. Colour changing yarn is always so fun to knit, too! I REALLY wanted to do exactly the same as the designer, but I think that the Malabrigo colours she used might have been special limited editions, and Noro is always difficult to try to match! Actually, that particular Noro yarn has become difficult to get at all, let alone the correct colour, so I have had to make some changes. So, no matching the designer for this project! As a consequence of this, and my desire to really get it right, I have spent way too much money acquiring yarn possibilities, and way too much time researching and attempting to choose … in fact, there is still more yarn on the way as I type this (Noro).
When I looked at the qualities of the yarn that the designer chose, I found that the Malabrigo is a non-super wash singles yarn. I definitely have some misgivings about using a singles yarn in a blanket as they are usually not as robust as a plied yarn. However, in the spirit of trying to replicate what the designer created, but also wanting to save some money, I found the Tweed Delight yarn. It is also a singles yarn but it has just a tiny bit of polyester and a tiny bit of viscose (presumably as the flecks), so I am hoping it might be a bit more robust. It is also extremely soft, which is a very nice surprise! I still have significant misgivings about the use of a singles yarn, though, and I am thinking that I might end up buying some Malabrigo Rios.
The other thing I am concerned about is exactly how my Noro colour ways are going to play with the other colours that I have. I’m thinking that I might have been better off going with a light warm neutral or even a very light pink for the background. I am going to have to do some swatching of everything to see what I think … there is a good possibility that there will be more than one blanket - or I might just use the extras for completely different projects, we will see …

Hmmmm! I decided to knit a garter swatch in the Taiyo Aran 95 in order to get an idea of how the colours will play with my plainer yarn, and choose a colour. The suggested swatch is on 5mm needles using the mosaic stitch, but I didn’t want to do the mosaic stitch without knowing which yarn I was using because I have the feeling that none of the yarns I have will frog particularly well, so one yarn at a time in order to have some idea seemed a better idea. I am thinking that mosaic will not only result in some vertical compression, because of the slipped stitches, but possibly also a whisker of horizontal compression. Given this, I want my garter swatch to have 16 sts giving just a little bit more than 10cm in order to allow for the changes associated with mosaic. Seems logical, but it might not work in practice!!! In any case, the suggested 5mm needles gave me 18sts to 10cm - this was different in exactly the opposite way to what I think I need, and by quite a bit!!! I thought perhaps 6mm needles would be worth a try, but couldn’t find them, so I have gone up to 6.5mm needles …
… so, with 6.5mm needles I am still getting just a hair under 10cm with 16sts! However, I don’t want to go up another needle size b/c I don’t want the fabric too open. The good news is that I have chosen my colour B. What I am planning to do now is just cast on with 6.5mm needles and recheck the gauge after I’ve done a few cm …
NB: I had forgotten that the stated gauge in the pattern is blocked. This means that having more sts to get to 10cm is perfectly reasonable as they will stretch out in blocking. Having said that, my unblocked gauge with the larger needles and using the actual mosaic pattern is actually 19sts to 10cm. I am thinking that this will actually probably be ok. I guess it just goes to show how limited is the value of a gauge swatch unless you do it exactly as suggested … unfortunately, my knitting tension tends to be quite variable, too, so my gauge swatches often lie to me, but they are still a valuable tool in giving a rough idea of what to expect…

I note that we need a provisional cast on. I always have trouble with the crochet provisional cast on, so I am going to do a JMCO with one of the strands being a waste yarn that can simply be either threaded back through its own loops in order to hold, or onto a spare cable or something …
This seems to have worked really well

Having big misgivings that my yarn A and yarn B might be too similar for the pattern to show. I’ve only done 8 rows, though, so I think I will do at least one go through the chart and reassess …
… after 20 rows I decided that there simply wasn’t enough contrast between my two yarns and switched the B yarn to a green - I think it is called Celadon, from memory. Instantly happier with the effect! Yay!!! I will try to remember to make the other end match by doing the last 20 rows with the pink as the background again .

I am planning on making an attempt at mirroring the colour progression like the the designer has done. This requires regularly changing which end of the yarn ball you’re working from. I have noticed that in some Noro yarn in the past that there is an occasional ball that is wound in the other direction, so I will assess all of the balls of yarn and try to use whichever one will involve the least winding on (ie wastage) to get to the needed colour, whether it means pulling from the outside of the ball or the inside. I plan on making this change at the beginning of each new go through the chart. I need to reassess how much of the Taiyo I have, too, in case I need to be inserting some rows of a different yarn somewhere… and I still need to have a look at my gauge…

I think I just came up with a method of improving both the speed and my consistency of gauge for performing the wrong side rows!!! I naturally hold the yarn in my right hand and drop the needles to move the yarn. This means that anything where I have to move the yarn to the opposite side of the fabric takes time, as in slipping the stitches on the wrong side rows in this pattern. I am thinking that if I move the yarn to the wrong side, slip the stitch, and then bring the yarn to the opposite side again by bringing it over the needle as I knit the next stitch(rather than dropping the work and bring ing the yarn back around the stitch just slipped in order to be ready to knit the next stitch), it is a more efficient way of doing things. In effect, it is producing a yo over the top of the slipped stitch, thus providing a nice length of yarn for the float. On the next row, those yo strands can be dropped to the wrong side of the fabric. I’m sure I’m far from the first person to have ever discovered this trick. We will see how it goes …

Ok! One go through chart completed. Gauge at this point is ~19sts to 10cm, which I think is ok b/c blocking will stretch it all out. The reason I felt compelled to check my gauge now is b/c I am worried about running out of yarn and I am knitting with way larger needles than the pattern states (but I am a reasonably tight knitter - mind you, I am finding that I am not pulling as tight as usual b/c I don’t want to break the yarn). In any case, I think that stitch gauge should be ok. My row gauge is around 38rows to 10cm (yep! My blanket is just over 10cm long currently). Again, this will be stretched with blocking. The pattern row gauge is 29rows to 10cm. As with the stitch gauge, this has reassured me about whether not I am likely to run out of yarn.
… Having said that, the yarn requirement is for 880m of yarn A and I only have around 800m!. I have been tossing around ideas in my head in an effort to come up with some yarn-saving ideas. What I think I might do is change yarn A to a different yarn for the sixth repeat of the chart only. There are supposed to be 11 repeats, so that should mean that if the different yarn is noticeable, it will simply be like an accent of the middle chart repeat for the blanket. Other ideas that I had involved substituting yarn for just a few rows at a time at intervals throughout the pattern, but I think I am going to be happier with a central pattern repeat in its entirety in the different yarn.

Currently up to row 31 of my second go through the chart and I wanted to write down these thoughts about the colour-changing yarn b/f I forget. I suspect that Either the designer didn’t use all of the colours in her yarn, or her colour way had far fewer colours than the one that I am using. I noted that she cut hers and then cycled through the colours in the opposite direction by using the opposite end of the yarn, and I am intending to attempt to emulate that, but I am pretty sure that she would have already been into the second direction of colour progression by this point in her blanket … and she did a smaller size than what I am doing. I suspect that she might have changed “colour direction” to correlate not only with the colours she wanted to use (leaving out other colours), but also to correlate with a certain point in the pattern. For example, with each turn through the chart. This has implications for the amount of yarn needed if you want to do exactly as I suspect she might have done, b/c you are only using partial balls of yarn. In any case, I might be completely incorrect! I am thinking of sending her a message to ask about it. At this point, I am almost through one complete colour cycle of my yarn, so I will need to investigate my yarn to determine how will be most economical to cycle back the other way. I am not changing to correlate with the progress through the mosaic chart - although, I think that would probably give a nicer result … I suppose there is a chance that I could be up to changing colour direction very close to the end of two goes through the chart. We will see what happens …

Now at the point where I have finished two goes through the chart. Interestingly, I am also back to the beginning of the colour progression in yarn A, so need to investigate how best to go back through the progression in the other direction, and I also need a new ball of yarn B - although, it should be noted that this ball of yarn B only started halfway through the first go at the chart b/c I started off with a pink as yarn B. So, in short, it looks like 1 ball of yarn B lasts more or less one and a half goes through the chart and the colour progression in yarn A lasts two goes through the chart … not sure what all of that means, except that it might help me predict yarn usage …
…oh my goodness me!!! Trying to ascertain what the colour progression is for my colour A (Noro Taiyo) yarn is a nightmare!!! I suspect that some colourways might be easier than others. My balls of yarn for this particular colourway seem to have a reasonably predictable progression from the outside through to when you encounter the first colour again, but what happens after that is anyone’s guess - it doesn’t seem to repeat the same progression from that point … nor does it seem to just reverse direction. I am sure that there is some logic behind it all, but that logic isn’t apparent to me. Maybe it would be easier to see if the yarn was laid out in one long string, but rolled up in a ball makes things difficult. Of course, it is even more complicated because none of the balls start with the same colour . So, I am just approximating as best I can the mirroring of the colour progression. The mirrored effect will look a bit different to the designer’s anyway, b/c I am doing a larger blanket, so the colours are stretched across further and don’t come back on themselves as much to create vertical dimension to each colour “stripe”. After this experience, I would suggest that anyone who is using Noro and wants to have some kind of order to the colour progression through their blanket, does a thorough assessment of their balls of yarn prior to starting, and then actually rewind the yarn, breaking wherever necessary, in order for the progression to happen as intended. I know that it sounds a bit over the top, but I really feel that this would be the best way, if the colourway is anywhere near as “random” as mine appears to be …

Using Russian joins for the Noro yarn, and spit splicing the Hobbii yarn. There will be very few tails to weave in at the end .

6/8/23 put on hold momentarily to knit a shawl for mum …

25/8/23 finished knitting the shawls for mum’s birthday so I am back to knitting this Hluboka blanket.

I am surprised at how much I am enjoying knitting this and also at how much I am liking the fabric even though it is quite “woolly” in feel. The only thing that I am a little bit disappointed in is that it kind of looks like a jumble of different bands of colour on a green background rather than showing off the beautiful mosaic pattern. I think that this might be because there are just too many different colours in this particular colourway of the Noro yarn and the different colours are not over long enough lengths to create colour blocks that are wide enough for the mosaic pattern to be distinct. In other words, a smaller size blanket knitted with this same colourway would probably show the mosaic pattern better as each different colour would form more of a block (rather than a very narrow stripe), therefore giving the mosaic pattern more of a chance to shine. Something else I could have done to make the colours into more of a block rather than a narrow stripe is to do each colour separately from more than one ball of yarn - ie, work through a colour from one ball then join another ball and work through that same colour again, before moving on to the next colour. You could do this however many times is necessary to create a colour block of the size you wanted, limited only by the number of balls of yarn you have with the needed colour. There would be quite a lot of joins! In any case, I had no idea that all of this might be an issue before I started, and I am still very happy with my blanket exactly the way it is, so there is no way that I am changing what I am doing at this point (half way through the fifth chart repeat). If I ever knit this again, and there is a good chance I might b/c I am enjoying it, I will know to think about this issue b/f I start. Also, if anyone else reads my very verbose notes, it might be helpful for them

So, I have started the sixth chart repeat. This is the centre chart repeat for the blanket. Seeing as I am a bit worried that I won’t have enough of the Noro in the same colourway, I want to preserve it a bit if I can. With this in mind, I am using the pink that I initially tried as the background colour in place of the Noro, only for this chart repeat. I decided that this would provide a bit of a visual tie to each end where I have (or will have) this pink instead of the green for 20 rows. I already know that it “goes well” with the Noro b/c the whole reason why I had to swap it out for the green was that it just blended in. I am also thinking that it might provide a bit of a resting point for the eye in the FO. Although I am loving this project, the Noro colourway that I am using is creating a somewhat chaotic visual effect (lots of narrow stripes of lots of colours in a busy mosaic pattern). I am also hoping that having this chart in a solid colour will help to bring out the mosaic pattern b/c it is being somewhat obscured by the Noro chaos … although, this effect might change when the blanket is finished and blocked and can be viewed as a whole from a little bit of distance…
Anyway, looking at the sixth chart repeat, it is a bit wider than I thought it would be. It probably would have been ok to do the yarn substitution for just the rows containing the full motif (I think it is something like rows 7 to 35) rather than for the full chart. I’m still ok with how it looks, though …

I had the idea that you could create an effect similar to the designer’s by simply choosing two or three colours rather than the Noro and working out a row by row fade sequence to coordinate with the chart repeats …

The Noro yarn pulled apart at one point in the seventh chart repeat. All of the magenta coloured yarn in that repeat was extremely softly spun, making it very fragile (which is a bit of a worry). Fortunately, it felted together quite well where it had pulled apart. After that, I tried to add a bit more twist to the magenta yarn and also was very aware of not tugging on it too hard whilst knitting. Hopefully, it will be robust enough to hold now that it is knitted in… also, back in the fifth chart repeat, I was looking over my work and found (horror of horrors) a cute little knot in the Noro sitting on the RS smiling at me. How on earth I had missed a knot whilst actually knitting I don’t know. I seem to recall that this is another issue that Noro yarn is a bit notorious for, though. No wonder it is difficult to follow the colour changes when the yarn is sometimes abruptly just knotted to the next piece without any regard for colour progression! In any case, I was not happy to just leave a knot in the middle of the blanket. To fix it, I cut a piece of Noro yarn in a colour that I thought would blend in at that point, of ~30cm long, and threaded it onto a yarn needle. Next, I secured all of the stitches surrounding the knot that would be affected by undoing the knot. Then I carefully undid the knot and pulled a few stitches undone to the left of where the knot was, following the path of the yarn as it was undone with the needle that had the “bridging yarn” threaded on it. I stopped undoing stitches when there was enough of the old yarn to do a Russian join with that end - which is exactly what I did. Next, I followed exactly the same procedure for the old yarn that was on the other end of the knot, using the other end of the “bridging yarn”. Getting the tension correct was not easy. Thinking about it now, it is probably a good idea, if I do this in future, to make the bridging yarn form quite a few stitches so that the joins are not so close together. In fact, simply weaving in the ends after looping the yarns around each other, rather than using a Russian join could well give a better result - you would just need to make sure that you undid enough stitches from the old yarn in order to create decent tail lengths for weaving in.

I’ve been having thoughts about the border (when I eventually get there at some point in the future:

• I think I would like it to be mainly in the Pink Tweed Delight for the first few rounds, to tie in the pink where it has been used in the main panel. I am considering a thin stripe or two in the green and/or the Noro in the first bit, too.
• I think the majority of the border will probably be in something like a darker green Tweed Delight that I have, but I’m not sure about that.
• I have also had thoughts about accent stripes in the border using a bright pink colour Tweed Delight that I have that is a true match for the magenta in the Noro yarn
• I would like to somehow emphasise the mitering on the corners in the border. The pattern instructions are to kfb in the stitch before the corner and the stitch after the corner in the knit rows only. I have had the thought that maybe if I kfb the stitch before, yo, kfb on the knit rows and then drop the yo and slip the next stitch (maybe also twisting it) on the purl rows, that might provide a nice diagonal line of slipped stitches at the corners … I’m not sure …

Border
Over 760sts to start and that number only increases … what was I thinking?!?!?

Anyway, I started to do some cardmaking as a hobby last year, and one thing I learned from that was that how you choose to frame something (eg a panel) can make a huge difference to how it looks at the end. I decided that this was probably also true for things like the border on a blanket, so I put a fair bit of thought into the border here. Firstly, I wanted to tie it all together. This was especially important b/c I had the Dusty rose as the background colour for ~20 rows at the start of the mosaic panel, which I mirrored at the end, and I also used it instead of the Noro colour-changing yarn for the what is the central chart repeat. To tie these sections together, I thought that using it for the pick up for the border might be nice. I thought that including the Celadon in the border would probably also help with creating some unity in the piece. I had decided that having the border mainly a dark colour was probably a good idea both in practical terms (the edges are most likely to get dirty/ratty) and because, to me, the blanket needed some more contrast/depth. Luckily, I had the Tweed Delight Marshland and thought that it would probably do the trick…also, it fits with the original plan for the colour scheme, which was to have pink and green as the main colours. The Noro kind of didn’t turn out that way, though! Anyway, by pure serendipity, I discovered that yet another colour of the Tweed Delight that I have (Geranium) perfectly matches some of the pink/magenta in the Noro. I decided that including the Geranium in the border might well provide a really nice accent of contrast and brightness whilst still matching the mosaic colours in the main panel, and also reinforce my initial idea of having a mainly pink and green colour scheme.
It all seems somewhat logical to me, but we will see how it turns out …
Sequence:
Pick up - Dusty Rose
Round 1 (purl) - Dusty Rose
Rounds 2-5 - Celadon
Rounds 6 and 7 - Marsh
Rounds 8 and 9 - Geranium
Remaining rounds - Marsh

Joined a new ball of Marsh 2/3 of the way through round 13. This means the ball lasted 5 and 2/3 rounds at this point.

13 garter ridges (= around 26 rows) of the solid Marsh colour after the dark pink before binding off. That makes 18 ridges total in the border when you include the striped section. Not far from the 15 ridges that the pattern calls for. I thought that the extra rows were needed in this case for the border to look of a pleasing proportion with the main panel. In reality, I probably could have done another four or six rounds before binding off, but I was ready for this to be finished - and I think it looks perfectly ok with the border at this depth … and the bind off was already going to take forever as it was without additional stitches. I chose a 3st icord bind off b/c I do really like the look of the finish it gives and, also, I thought it would probably give a nice, cushy, squishy edge that was good for snuggling. At the corners, I did one extra round of icord before the slipped st (ie, no k2tog, just knit the three sts and slip them back to the left needle), then I did a normal icord round knitting the slipped stitch together with the icord st, then I did another extra icord round that didn’t have a k2tog, then proceeded as per the usual icord bind off to the next corner … which was a very, very loooong way away …