Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Stripping

Believe it or not, I've finished all twenty squares for my Noro Log Cabin Blanket and I've started assembling them into strips. I did the first strip this morning, and it was nowhere near as difficult or tedious as I expected. I laid out the squares on the floor and played with the arrangement until I liked the result, then stacked up the squares in order. I decided to attach them in horizontal rows first, then attach those strips together vertically.

To put them together, I picked up and knitted along the edge of each square for half the width of the strip, then grafted the strip halves together in the middle, as you can see above. The grafting line isn't invisible, but it's pretty good and there's no seam. It turns out grafting in garter is easier than grafting in stockinette.

The yarn I'm using for the strips between the squares is some prune colored baby boucle that's been in the stash for years. It's a blend of mohair, cotton, and wool--unusual, but quite soft. I swatched it a few times for different tops, but finally decided I'd never like it for a sweater, so this was a good use for it. The color picks up on the purples in virtually all the Noro squares and the solid makes a nice border for all the self-striping yarns in the squares.

I'm not sure how long I'll be able to maintain momentum on this (it's pretty boring), but I'd like to get this one finished, so I'll keep plugging along for as long as I can. More pictures soon!

7 comments:

mkonieczki said...

This is going to be incredible! I can't wait to see it all together! I hope it remains easy to piece together!

pdxknitterati/MicheleLB said...

Beautiful! I did a single crochet to join strips on a blanket recently, and I like the little chain accent between the strips. Anything that makes the assembling go faster is good in my book!

marit said...

This looks good!

AR said...

Just read the header and
for a moment there I thought you'd taken up a new hobby :-)


This blanket is going to be amazing!


Ann (long time lurker)

sophanne said...

New Hobby!!!! HA!

This will be on my to do list until I do it. (the Log Cabin afghan- not stripping!)

I think I may decide to assemble as I go and hope for the best in terms of design. Piecing Babette together made me crazy.

Susie said...

I can't wait to see this all together. Using Noro was brilliant.

Susan said...

Did you just keep on knitting on the same skein as you knit each rectangle? Or did you switch between 2 skeins??