Thursday, March 28, 2013

New Knitting ~ gauge swatch for baby blanket ~ and a question or two


Baby Wool ~ Colours: Blue Bonnet and Pear.
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My goal is to make a cute baby blanket with
these two colours.
I am thinking of a pattern something like this:
~rows of the two colour strands together
~rows of one colour together
~rows of the two colours together
~rows of the other colour together
repeat as needed.
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I think it will be really cute and varied!
It will be the first pattern I make on my own :)
I got the idea from a pattern on the
Lion Brand Yarn website called
Sunshine Day Baby Throw.
You have to register on the site to see it
(it's a real cute one! I may try it sometime
but would have to get the yarn colours first).

The biggest needles I have knit with so far! 13/9mm.
I am really loving them!
They are circular needles, as one needs this for bigger projects.
The bigger size is making it really easy to knit with two strands of yarn
and to see exactly what I am doing.
Also really easy to hold,
which is great when one's hands get a bit tired
from knitting on smaller needles.
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I am trying the Stockinette stitch.
I am doing a gauge swatch for the first time.

It seems that this side (above) is the purl side.

And this is the knit side.

I think I must of switched sides towards the beginning
as you can see (picture above and below)
how it changed...
(if anyone can confirm that this is as I suspect,
I would appreciate it!)

I am appreciating the easy instructions that I can review,
 as my class only briefly touched on the Stockinette stitch.
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Question:
The Stockinette stitch tends to roll up at the ends.
if you were making a baby blanket would you just leave this as is
or do you try to make a different edge to it?
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I hope you are all having a great start to your day!
It is sunny here and I may try to make cookies
before the day is out!
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What do you have planned for your day?

2 comments:

Donna Witek said...

What lovely yarn! I knit and crochet a bit (my level is maybe just below intermediate, so not an expert by any means). Answers to your questions I can do though :) First, yes, in your gauge it looks like you did one row of garter stitch at the spot where the indent switched over. Basically, when you flipped sides at that point, rather than begin with the opposite stitch (so, if you had been doing knit, you should have then purled)--instead of this you repeated the same kind of stitch for one extra row.

For your other question about edging on a stockinette piece so it doesn't roll, actually your "error" above gives a clue of what you could do. The simplest thing you could do is begin the blanket doing garter stitch, so knit a row, knit a row, knit a row, etc. (no purling yet) for the width of the border you'd like (I'd maybe do 5 or 6 rows for a baby blanket). Then when you're ready to begin the body of the blanket, do a purl row, then flip and do a knit row, flip and do a purl row, and thus you've moved to stockinette which you can do for the length of the blanket. Then when you are almost done, after your final knit row, then do 5 or 6 more knit-only rows to get the garter border again, then bind off.

Garter stitch (knit,knit,knit,knit rows) is chunkier and flatter than stockinette stitch (knit,purl,knit,purl rows), so the opening and closing rows will sort of be a chunky, flatter border that will weigh down the border (in a good way) so it doesn't roll or curl.

Oy hope that wasn't too much info! Let me know if you have any follow up questions to what I typed! :) Love watching your knitting projects friend! (Wish I had time to yarn along with you...some day when the baby is a little more independent perhaps :) )

Matushka Anna said...

Basically seconding Donna! Just what I was going to suggest.