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Sunday July 20, 2014
Martin Storey's Mystery Afghan Knitalong
For some reason this Rowan knitalong appealed to me so I duly started on the Thursday before Easter and here we are 10 weeks later - or whatever - and the blanket is complete. The blanket should be made in Rowan Pure Wool Worsted - which would be nicer than my choice which was to use "oddments" from my attic. This was not a cost cutting exercise but an attempt to make good use of yarn that I seem to have collected a lot of over the years. However the problem with oddments is that you never have enough of the right shades; so I spent a good deal of time stripping out plies and combining yarns to make the thickness I wanted in the colours I wanted. In two cases I altered the pattern (number of stitches) slightly to make the squares come out to the right size. The blanket is not pure wool but I have tried to make every square with some plies of synthetic and wool in it.
You can read more on the detail here.
I intentionally never went to view the intended yarn and colours as I knew that if I saw the Rowan yarn there was a good chance I would convince myself to buy it and that was not the idea. So I tried to match as best I could from the illustrations on the internet. I am very pleased with the result even though I know that in some cases I have substituted a colour (too many subtle shades of brown for me to match). I cracked over two colours: one was the raspberry pink - I have a number of pinks in my collection but not enough to really get enough contrast in 3 pinks - I purchased some new acrylic yarn in "Raspberry"; the other was the mustard colour for the edging - I had some mustard 4 ply but not enough - I purchased some vintage Sirdar Fontein Crepe 4ply in a deeply unappealing mustard colour and enhanced it with my 4 ply*.
In any event, the resulting blanket looks a little odd - or should I say unusual - and I think my attempt is as good as any. I did follow Martin's layout scheme, which I think is very cleverly done, (as you'd expect - he's a designer!).
* I bought this from one of my favourite vendors at Woolfest. Her stall is devoted to vintage craft equipment - looks like my own work room - nostalgic rather than cute - I love it.
Posted by Christina at 3:27 PM. Category: Knitting and Crochet
