Knitting 101... try, try again.

I'm realizing, not too late I hope, that everything that's worth learning takes time and sometimes involves many do-overs. With knitting, I find that I have to start over more often than I'd like to but I just tell myself that it's one more lesson learned and next time it will be easier. This was one of those times when I thought I knew what I was doing but the finished product turned out pretty bad. I mentioned before that I was working on a bulky blanket for the baby. It's pretty straight forward and I've been knitting for awhile now so I didn't think there would be any problems.

The biggest hitch came when I was knitting the green edge in the round. Meaning that I used circular needles so I couldn't see the shape of the blanket until I was completely done with it. And this is what I saw when it was all finished... ruffled edges because two of the sides had twice as many stitches as the other. I knew right away what I had done and it's a rookie mistake which is frustrating when my time to sit and knit is so precious. The blanket is supposed to be perfectly square but as you can see it was not.



And each of the corners were off kilter and looking more rounded then square. I put it away for the night but decided I loved the blanket and yarn enough that it was worth another attempt.


Thankfully I had just bought a new yarn winder a couple of days before so taking out my work was easy. No loose yarn to deal with and wind back up by hand.


Once I got back to two perfect skeins of green yarn I cast on again and started over. It was much easier this time to pick up the stitches on the uneven sides which is where I went wrong the first time. It's easy to edge something when you are following the next stitch on a pattern... not so easy on the sides of the pattern where it's less obvious where the next stitch will go. And that was my problem.

But a day and a half later, baby's blanket is finished... correctly.

I love the way the pattern calls to fold over the edging and bind off which not only makes the edge thicker but also cleans up the look.

Each corner squared out nicely. The yarn is an incredibly soft wool/organic cotton blend from Spud and Chloe. I used the Outer yarn in Flannel for the bulk of the blanket and the Sweater yarn in Grass for the edge. The best part is that it's washable.

Sawyer says he approves and I hope baby G will love it also. Only 6 1/2 weeks to go!

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