The August 2010 Project Yarnway Challenge is back to school. We don’t have kids, so back to school to me now means it’s time for College Football. Decided to design a stadium blanket - originally thought about doing a plaid in maize and blue (huge Michigan fan here). But as I was searching on the net for colors, I saw an aerial view of the Big House (Michigan’s football stadium) and I thought - hey, why not make a blanket that looks like the big house.

So - researching the specs on the size of the stadium and the size of regulation football fields. Have ordered yarn for field and will hand dye yarn to make up the crowd (mix of different shades of yellow and blue with some grey thrown in. HMMM - a lot of knitting to do in the next few weeks.

Cast on 77 in green - scale is 1” knit = 3 yards field.
Plan - knit field in round in green with steek (5 stitches) add white “yard lines every 1.5” (two rows knit).
Pick up and knit stitches around the field in white to create sidelines. Add white and yellow marl garter (hand dye) to long sides for players benches and band. May do one side in grey/ red for dreaded Ohio State bench. Then knit a garter band to go around the field for crowd. -using short rows to form corners. Sew to field. Crowd will be made of blue, white, yellow marl hand dye. May add in just a bit of red in one area for away fans.

15 days to go - start knitting on 8/15.
8/17 - field is 90% complete - will be 18x45” That’s a perimeter of 120” OMG! I just figured out how much more knitting the seat section is going to be. I made this thing too big!.
8/18 field finished and steek cut - need to embroider on the M and the Michigan in the end zones. Going to leave yard line numbers to the last and will do that only if I have time. Have dyed what yarn I have for the crowd and knit one of the
40 sections. OMG - I don’t think there is any way I’m going to finish this thing.

8/20 - field is complete - added short row sections along long sides to give it a bit of an oval effect and to add in the team benches. Got the Block M in yesterday. Working on the first corner of the seat section today with short rows. Will do stadium in sections, three needle bind off to the field, and stitch the sections together - I hope.
8/27 - I finished all the knitting, attaching, seaming and weaving in ends this morning. It feels very good to be done. I am very happy with the finishing of this - all the seams are neat and the steek created a nice facing on the back. I thought I was going to have to line this, but it really isn’t necessary.

Now I’m looking at that duplicate stitch block M and thinking that doesn’t look so great. I think I’m going to take that out and redo with a felt applique.

8/30 - finished today! I can’t really believe it. I did the i-cord edging over the weekend. Actually it was enjoyable and relatively quick. I just picked up stitches from the garter bumps in sections and worked the 3-stitches using a 10.5 US needle.

I spent the bulk of today doing the field details. I don’t know why I didn’t do this BEFORE i attached the crowd sections. I had thought I could sew most of the letters and number with the machine, but there was no way to manuever all that blanket under the machine to do a neat job wiht the sewing. So I basted in place with fusible web, and then hand tacked everything down. Tedious. Last I stitched the hash marks on, and tidied up the steek edges on the back. Whew. Now just have to keep the dog off.