our purl jam knitting group made this blanket as a surprise wedding gift for starryknit with help from other friends of starryknit (some not pictured). we managed to keep the project a secret for 1.5 years!

i found this pattern on kathymarie’s blog, get your hook on. it’s now linked on ravelry. i highly recommend it for a group project. the squares are easy and fun to knit, particularly in kureyon, and garter stitch is stretchy enough to hide small differences in gauge (although we did try to make them match - see details below).

i knit the 3 squares shown in the photo, helped someone with another square, joined some squares into a strip (with an assist by liztough), and also kitchenered (!!) one strip to another at the sf-one-sock-a-month group 2010 ravelympics opening party.

yarn: we used 23 unique kureyon colorways for the squares and two squares were made from the leftovers. the border is in cascade ecological wool. it comes in big 250g skeins - we used just under two skeins total.

gauge: we all tried to get the same gauge, 17 stitches & 17 garter ridges (34 rows) per 4 inches in garter stitch.

the pattern is perfect as written but here are explicit details that we followed to try to get matching squares from a varity of knitters, including some working remotely:

picking up stitches: odd rows on center square are the RS. pick up stitches on the RS(lower/front edge) of the bind-off/cast-on edge (not through the middle of the stitch below the bind-off/cast-on edge)

side strips: the number of stitches per side strip are as follows:

• Side Strip 1: 1 leftover + 20 picked up on garter ridges = 21
• Side Strip 2: 1 leftover + 6 garter ridges + 15 cast-on edge = 22
• Side Strip 3: 1 leftover + 6 garter ridges + 20 garter ridges = 27
• Side Strip 4: 1 leftover + 6 garter ridges + 15 bind-off edge + 6 garter ridges = 28
• Side Strip 5: 1 leftover + 6 garter ridges + 20 bind-off edge + 6 garter ridges = 33
• Side Strip 6: 1 leftover + 6 garter ridges + 21 bind-off edge + 6 garter ridges = 34
• Side Strip 7: 1 leftover + 6 garter ridges + 26 bind-off edge + 6 garter ridges = 39
• Side Strip 8: 1 leftover + 6 garter ridges + 27 bind-off edge + 6 garter ridges = 40

finished dimensions: each square 9 1/2 x 11” measured on outside strips (but they bulge out a bit in the middle) plus or minus 1/4”