Martin Storey Mystery Afghan Knitalong

Sunday July 20, 2014

Christina: Gold from Straw

Finally completed.

Unsurprisingly, the squares pucker in places due to variability in size and yarn weight. However I am pretty pleased with the result. I think it looks slightly weird but that's the project and not the way I knitted it! It has certainly turned out as a very usable throw.

[I finished off the edging at the Guild meeting yesterday and everyone was very polite in admiring it. A lot of people really liked the cable edging which seems to have caused great controversy on Ravelry - lots of people replacing it - I never understood this as I think the edging is both suitable and lovely.]

Posted by Christina at 9:28 AM. | Comments (1)

Monday June 23, 2014

Christina: Colourwork - and rework

I was doing well with my squares but having completed them all now, I have decided to reknit some of them.

In order to use my scraps I actually split some of the plies in the yarns, as well as knitting 4plys and 2 plies together. This was not quite as much of a pain as one might think (I did it dynamically while knitting). This resulted for the most part in the squares being a little denser than they first started out. So my initial "blackcurrant" square in Phildar Oxygene was too flimsy, and I reknitted with additional plies in the same shade of Phildar Luxe, (and there was also some Jaeger Luxury Spun in there too!).

For the "seville" colour I used 2 strands of an unknown synthetic 4 ply together and they came out much too big - so I altered the pattern to have 5 bobbles across the row instead of 6 and again completely reknitted them. The sister squares of "dots and dashes" came out too small - so I just added some extra rows to the square; here I had completely replaced the brown colour with grey.

In general I did not have enough interesting brown shades to match - so I replaced one with grey (as above) and the other with olive.

I had to purchase one ball of raspberry pink budget acrylic - I did have a yarn which might have worked - but not enough of it. And I purchased a few ounces of vintage Sirdar Fontein Crepe 4 ply pure wool while at Woolfest - looks like it came from my stash but didn't! This was the mustard edging - I combined it with some unknown 2ply I had on a cone.

The blanket is a mix of wool and synthetic with attention being paid only to the colour mix. I also unwillingly used cotton blends in 2 cases in order to get the colours.

Posted by Christina at 10:01 AM. | Comments (0)

Monday April 21, 2014

Christina: Scrap Quilt

I noted this Rowan knitalong was starting while in France over Easter - but I've decided not to invest in more wool but use my own oddments from the attic. I am not sure how it will work out. However, I am determined to try and match the colours as I see them on the web - without actually checking out the recommended Rowan Pure Wool Worsted in a shop - I am sure if I saw the intended colours I would want to make it properly - and since I don't actually need a blanket, that would rather defeat the object.

I have decided to go down a needle size and use double knitting yarn. Here are the first two squares - which I have knitted in a vintage mix of Phildar yarns.

Posted by Christina at 7:39 PM. | Comments (0)