Life as a Spectator Sport

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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Progress on ducky blanket

I've finished one panel of the blanket for my grandson, and I hate this yarn. It's Bernat Baby Boucle, a bulky-weight acrylic yarn that I didn't chose so much as acquiesce to. The pattern was on the ball band and I liked the texture of the knitted-up sample in the store, so I bought it. But it's a real b**tch, excuse the French, to work with. The needles catch in the boucle loops, the yarn is not very strong at all (I broke one stitch trying to work the needle free of a loop), and it doesn't feel soft any more when you've had it in your hands for an hour.

But I've gotten this far with it now, so I'm not going to rip it out. I'm just sorry I bought as much of the yarn as I did. I'd had ideas of making the blanket roughly twice the size of the original, since the "baby" it's being made for is going to be four next month. But I wimped out when I came to the end of the yarn in one of the white stripes. I just did not want to knit another foot of blue and white intarsia stripes. So I went on to the duck in the corner, and as a result, the blanket will be only about one and a half times as large as the directions call for, and I'll have a bunch of this nasty acrylic left over.

I'm working on the middle panel now, which is solid blue with white horizontal stripes at the top and bottom. The directions said to cast on 50 stitches, and in an excess of virtue, I cast on 72, making the center panel three times the width of the end panels. It's going to be a loooong slog of nothing but back and forth knit and purl to get this finished, and then I'll still have the other side panel to do. Isaac had better like this when I'm finished with it! He's a bit old for a favorite blankie, but his mom carried her green and white ripple afghan around until she wore it out, so perhaps he'll do the same. I should have listened to her request for a similar one for the baby, because it would have been long since finished and given to him.
posted by Liz @ 12:47 PM     |


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