What colors should the Hoover blanket be? I wanted a cream border, which settled over half the problem. My first idea was to have several runs of narrow stripes in each of five jewel tones, separated by wide cream bars.
I wanted to start working, but the Weatherwood knitting store didn't have many colors to choose from: greens, blues, purples, and lots of cream. The proprietor kindly let me study a Rowan color card. I selected colors to order later online and bought a few there. Since the store was in Weatherwood, the only circular needles carried were Addi Turbos.
Two huge questions: total yarn consumption? total time consumption?
I could get upper and lower bounds out of my test swatches, but those were a factor of two apart (oh, was I longing for my kitchen scale!) Early on I set up some spreadsheets. Every time I finished a row or a ball, I updated. Sadly, what the bottom garter stitch border told me was simply inaccurate. The stitches are significantly larger in the double-knit section and it takes time to pass a stitch (waaah).
Just to be clear: I started with a pattern that had double fabric over most of the blanket, where every stitch in the double fabric section is handled twice. Then I increased the size. Then I switched from worsted-weight to doubleknit-weight. This is as much knitting, total, as between three and six "typical" baby blankets.
In Canada, there was more time to knit than I was expecting (no internet access in my dorm room!). I wanted to work as long as possible with the yarn I had, so I decided to (a) make the blanket one giant rainbow, with each stripe using a full ball of colored yarn (b) have at least two shades of each color, one dark, one light— that way I could use the lavender left from the test swatches.
Still, I was going to need more cream, and some light blue, before I got home. The best yarn store in the city was only two bus stops away, but they were very Debbie Bliss focused; the only Rowan was bulky wool tweed. I coudn't find a Canadian online yarn store, so I ordered the next few balls from Yarnmarket. The rest, enough to complete the project, came from Stitch1Knit1: with international shipping, it was still like 30% less per ball than any U.S. source I found.
Except: remember how I wanted two shades of each color? Rowan had discontinued their light orange. I finally snagged Laughing Hens's last ball.
Beaker soon assured me that both pacakges from England had arrived in Granolaton. In Canada I waited and waited. I had to stop working for a week, and finally re-ordered the same colors, but sent to Granolaton—I didn't think they would show up before I left.
The package had gotten hung up in customs, of course, and then the notice slip got lost by my dormitory (or my roommates?) for several days. I picked it up at the post office and paid the like, 25% duty (on top of the high US price for the yarn) two days before I left.
Meanwhile, I tried to figure out how to knit on the many plane trips I had coming up. The Canadian shop didn't have any totally-non-metallic circular needles in the size I needed, so I got bamboozled into a set of Denise needles... not that that's a bad thing, long term, but the shop had stocked and priced the set when the US$/CAN$ exchange rate was, um, different. I paid a good US$15 extra for them.
Once I got home, I studied the colors that had come in
and decided to scale back: I had three blues, three greens, and three pinks, and I cut out the medium blue and the darkest green.
Of course, that last picture gives away quite a bit about progress since... details to come.
The denise needle set is the single best knitting related purchase I have ever made. I would pay twice what I paid for mine and still think it was worth it.
The colors are lovely. I'm working on the same blanket for my sister in law and it is going very, very slowly. I'm looking forward to pictures when you have some.
Posted by: Amy | Wednesday, August 17, 2005 at 01:43 AM