arthur_p_dent

My blanket project has been going well. So well, in fact, that I got complacent and stopped doing periodic checks on my dimensions. And of course, I'm off again.

This time, I found that my stitches had gotten too loose. Not only was I three rows short for the length, but I had also gone almost an inch too wide.

So now, the past week's work has been frogged and piled losely in my project basket, and tomorrow when I've put that annoyance behind me I'll get back to it.

Started making a scarf yesterday to burn off the last of my bulky yarn. Thought I had enough for about 4 feet, but as I approached the halfway point it was clear I was going to be way short. Then I threw it around my neck, and realized it was far too wide as well.

So now I have a basket of loose yarn, and a project to restart another day. =]

 Well, the day is finally here.  With winter upon us, and the first real storm of the year battering the windows with wind and snow - I couldn't think of a better day to put the finishing touches on my crochet blanket project.

Almost 7 months from start to finish.

From initial concept, to pattern design, to finding the right materials.

From the first chain, through construction of 17 separate sections.

From laying everything out, to realizing that 7 of those sections needed either fixing (4), or complete reconstruction (3).

From blocking, to stitching everything together, to adding a border, and finally, weaving in all the loose ends.

And here is the final result:



I think it looks great, and I'm very proud of how it turned out.

And to those who followed along over the past months, thank you for your comments and encouragement.  I'm not sure I would have gotten half way through this without having all of you to share it with.

=]

Once again, it's been a while since the last update.  This time it wasn't a memory lapse though - side project #2 kinda ate up about 3 weeks, and I was sick for a week as well.  But with that behind me, I've been able to make some significant progress and I'm entering the home stretch.

As of my last post, 16 out of 17 sections were complete and the last one was in the process of being replaced.  That last piece has since been finished, and I have also completed bordering all of the pieces in black to fill in the spaces between them.  On Friday I began the process of blocking the various pieces to stretch them into shape.  I had to do this in two separate stages because I didn't have nearly enough straight pins for the whole thing.  This morning I got the second set of pieces blocked and took a progress picture...



Tomorrow evening I'll unpin everything and get all the pieces dry, and then start making plans for joining them all together.  I'm sort of toying with the idea of using a single crochet stitch to add texture, but most likely I'll use a simple mattress stitch with a darning needle - I'm getting to the point where the desire to get the project finished is outweighing any thoughts of adding more design features.

How am I for timing?  Well, at last update I was a month behind.  Tack on SP#2 and a bout of bronchitis, and I'm now closer to 2 months - completion should be somewhere around Christmas.

That's all for this time.  I'll be back with another update in a couple weeks.  =]

 Well, last Friday came and went, and unfortunately I wasn't able to get the blanket done in time for the main gift-giving day.  However, my coworker doesn't go on her mat leave for almost 2 weeks, so there is still time.

As of yesterday, I have the main body of the blanket complete.  Tomorrow I'll be starting on the border, and after that it just needs to be washed and blocked for shape.  Hopefully it will be finished and ready to wrap on Sunday, because I *really* need to get back to my own blanket project.

Have an eye out this weekend for a post with a pic.  =]

It had totally escaped me that nearly 2 months have gone by since I've done an update on my blanket project.  Quite a lot has transpired during that time - some good, some not so much.

At the last update, I was just getting ready to start the last set of pieces (3 large blue).  Talk about opening a can of worms!  After completing the first piece I took it to do some measurements, and found that I was an inch short in each direction.  At first I couldn't figure out what happened, but I finally realized that it was the ball of yarn that was the problem - when the individual strands were twisted together it was done too loosely, so my stitches were compacted more than any of the other balls of yarn I had used.

Not sure exactly what to do about it yet, I put that piece aside and started on the remaining 2 pieces.  Having started a new ball of yarn (one that was manufactured properly), those ones worked up much better than the first.  I was also very diligent about checking measurements often as I went along.  Once those were finished, I decided to add some rows to the first piece and fix the height of it, but I still wasn't sure how I was going to add width without it looking stupid.

At that point, which was about 3 weeks ago, I had completed all 17 sections, and I figured it was a good time to set up a blocker board and lay out all of the pieces to see how they fit.  The short answer to that question was "poorly".  In total, 7 pieces were out of whack.  Three of them I was able to leave as is, and 3 others were relatively easy to correct.  The last one - well, that was the first blue piece with the bad yarn, and I knew that there was no way I was going to be happy with a band-aid fix.  So off I went to get another ball of yarn, and I remade the whole thing (don't worry, the first piece isn't going to waste - it will eventually be used to make a matching pillow).

And that brings us to this morning.  With all 17 pieces complete again, I set up the blocker board and laid everything out.  Would you believe there was another piece that needed to be corrected?  I don't know how I missed it the first time - it was clearly too wide overall, and even beyond that, my stitch tension was so bad that the left and right edges had noticeable curves in them.  So guess what I started on this evening?  Yup - making a new one.  At least this time the yarn is OK, so I can simply pull the old piece apart as I work up the new one.

Here's a picture from this morning with all the pieces laid out...



The piece I'm working on replacing is the blue one near the top on the left edge.  You can see how it's clearly wider than the pieces above and below it - almost touching the charcoal piece on its right.

The final step is going to be joining everything together.  All of the gaps between the pieces will be filled in with strips of black stitching.  How am I going to accomplish that you might ask?  Well, the only thing I can say for certain at the moment is that it will involve a lot of swearing!

My original timeline for completion was the end of October, but with everything I needed to fix I'm about a month behind.  Which isn't bad considering the scope of the project, and the fact that I'm basically making things up as I go.

When I get the first few pieces stitched together I'll be back with another update. =]

 Now that I'm back working on my own blanket, I've finished the 4 sections for colour #2, which is a light grey.  And here they are:



As with the first colour, each piece is labeled so that I can keep track of everything during the final assembly.  This makes 9 sections completed, and neatly stored for the time being.  Up next is the third set of grey sections, with this set being darker than the first two (think charcoal grey).

On a crochet side-note, I took some time recently to clean up and organize my equipment, supplies, and yarn stash.  I had a lot of test patches and scraps taking up space (tossed), and many other things that were still in bags got pulled out and stacked on shelves.  Aside from what I have for this current project, it appears I have a considerable amount of other yarn that I will eventually need to find projects for.  Some will probably make its way into my temperature blanket next year, and I think I might give basket-making a shot with some of the really chunky stuff.  I'm also accumulating a fair bit of remnants as I work on these blankets, and they could end up being used to make some little stuffed critters, or maybe even a patch-work pillow.

Or, who knows?  Maybe by the end of the year I'll be tired of crochet and take a break for a while.

But for now I'm enjoying the projects.  It's keeping my hands busy and my mind occupied, both of which are very welcome these days.

Until next time.  =]

 It's lunch time. Just had sushi in the park (now a regular weekly thing). Solo today - beautiful weather and little foot traffic, so it's been quite peaceful. The past couple weeks I shared this time with a friend, which was also great. All in all I'm really happy I had this idea.

Tomorrow is my afternoon off. So far it's just been golf, and I think that's what I'll do tomorrow as well. But taking that time during the week has also turned out to be a really great way to break up the monotony of the everyday. I'm going to have to put some thought into what I can do to carry this on through the colder months, because being cooped up indoors for many months gets old real quick.

My crochet blanket project is temporarily on hold. Why, you ask? Because I started another crochet blanket project! This one was a spur of the moment decision and has a short timeline, so it's the priority for the next week or so. A coworker is expecting next month, so I decided to make a baby blanket for the little ragamuffin. Pretty much winging it - no real pattern to follow (I get a kick out of doing that!). Sorry, no pics yet. You'll have to wait until it's finished.

Oh, and I went to two concerts recently. Billy Joel earlier in the month, and Shinedown a few days ago. Both were supposed to be in 2020, but for some strange reason kept getting delayed???? LOL! Both were great shows, and it was awesome getting back into larger events again. 

Well, that about sums up the past couple weeks. Time to head back to the office (I'm NOT talking about that - this is a happy post!). Hopefully you're all having a good week so far, and it continues on as well.

=]

I got kicked around by the heat today, to the point where I ended up sleeping half the afternoon away. So naturally, here I am, awake in the middle of the night. Since I knew this was a likely outcome, I decided to get started on my crochet blanket.

I mentioned before that I designed this all on my own, including all the calculations for the various dimensions, right? Well guess what? All my math was off. The length of the rows I figured out real quick, but I was mostly finished the first section before I found out the number of rows per inch was also wrong. Since the section was almost done I finished it out.

This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. I can either scrap what I've done, and start over using the calculations I already have, or I can do another section to test my revised math, and if it works out then recalculate all of the 31 remaining sections.

Now the easy way out would be to start over with my original numbers. But since part of the project was doing all the math to end up with 33 correctly-sized pieces, I'll be taking the long way. Sure it's a bit more work up front, but I don't think I would be happy with the end product if I were to take the short-cut.