i, umm, knit a blanket.

A story of Syncopation.

The motivation:

This is some sort of mash-up of my adventures in improv quilting and my obsession with making blankets. I finally figured out how to work with many colors at once in an efficient manner and this lovely rustic yarn in amazing tweedy colors that work well together came on the market right when i was ready for exactly this type of designing. [I'll write a detailed review of the yarn sometime, but I can go ahead and tell you that I love it. The photo below is of some of my current stash.]

The process:

I knit this in strips of varying widths and within strips I had ways to further improvise in smaller ways. Every color choice was made on instinct and all starting/stopping decisions were made in the moment. I might have worked with an idea for a couple of hours of knitting, but when I resumed knitting the next time I’d either continue the motif or just begin doing something else. You can kind of see when this might have happened.

There were always at least two strips being knit at once; flip-flopping between them to keep things interesting. Making some of the strips narrow also allowed this to be a good carry-along project. I could knit on it in meetings and in other “found moments.”

The final step , after seaming, was to add an applied i-cord edging, following this tutorial.

Though this is comprised of a ton of tedious garter stitch, it was incredibly engaging but kept me going because in the moment it required little thought. It was the perfect project for the semester I had. Oy.

The details:

Pattern: improvised garter stitch; applied i-cord on edges
Materials: Shelter yarn in all 17 colors; at least 1200g
Sticks: many US6 dpns, circs, and straight needles; US8 for i-cord
Finished size: 64″x 48″

Started: October 29, 2010
Finished: January 2, 2011

Art, knit, Synchopated

January 4, 2011

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