Husband's blanket update

Making good progress on Husband's afghan. The strips of blue and black Cascade 220 has been sewn together and now I just have to knit the top and bottom stripes. Progress picture:

Basic recipe:

Hold yarn double, cast on 20 stitches onto size 10US needles.

First six rows: Knit 5, Purl 5, Knit 5, Purl 5.

Next six rows: Purl 5, Knit 5, Purl 5, Knit 5.

Repeat, alternating rows so you get a checkerboard texture.

Continue until yarn runs out.

Make several strips. Sew them together so that the checkerboard is consistent throughout.

What I have left to do -- pick up stitches along the top in blue and continue the checkerboard texture so that there will be a frame of blue stripes around the black, blue, black, blue, black strips. Repeat with the bottom edge.

I did colors as strips to be knit together, so that direction of the checkerboard texture is the same throughout. Also, strips are more portable than hauling around an ever growing blanket.

The blanket is almost 5 feet wide and I don't have a size 10US needle long enough. So I finally broke down and ordered a set of the Knit Picks Options set of needles and ordered a 60 inch cable.

In the mean time, what will I do? I'm still thinking about my Rectangle of Malabrigo using the Malabrigo I have:

The colors are:

2 skeins Purple Mystery (one wound into a ball, one still in the hank) Notice how much darker one is than the other.

1 skein Buscando Azul, split into three balls -- Love. This. Color.

1 skein Oceanos still in the hank.

1 skein Saphire Green (their spelling). It's left over from a house coat sweater I made for myself last year. It's true, Malabrigo pills like crazy. But I love it anyway. So soft and cozy.

1 skein Pollen.

1 skein Tiger Lily.

What to do with all this Malabrigo goodness? I'm thinking of a log cabin afghan with green central squares. But I have more blue and purple than yellow and orange. Either I have to buy more yarn (oh the hardship) or leave off one skein of purple and blue.

I need to think about this.

Oh, by the way, the yarn I used for Husband's afghan is not machine washable. Which means I'll be washing this by hand. How could I have forgotten this detail?

For Brother Two's afghan, I did not make the same mistake. I made him pick only from the superwash (wool yarn chemically treated to withstand machine washing and drying without shrinking and felting) worsted weight yarn from the Knit Picks catalog. That yarn and Mason-Dixon Knitting should be here any day now.

WIPs

This weekend I was inspired to photograph my current projects:


Sister's Bicolor Cables cardigan, from Interweave Knits, in Cascade 220, not the recommended yarn.
The body is knit from the bottom up, in one piece up to the underarm. Then I finished the back.












Here are the sleeves. You can see that they are almost done, and then I decide to count the stitches and find that one has 10 more stitches on the needle than the other. I knit them both at the same time, from opposite ends of the same ball of yarn, precisely to make sure they match. And yet they don't. Another weekend of letting them sit.

This baby blanket is almost done, but here's a picture anyway. The yarn is Cascade Sierra in navy, light blue, pink, and white. The yarn in held double and that's how I got the tweedy look. Size J crochet hook. General pattern is 2 rows of double crochet of the solid colors and 4 rows of the mixed colors. There will be 2 rows of white on the sides to finish.

Husband's afghan: Cascade 220 in black and medium blue, held double, size 10 US needle. There will be alternating strips of black and blue, with a black border. Very similar to the baby blanket pattern, no? Very easy to make? Yes.

Here's a close up of each strip, knit in basket weave stitch. Each block of the basket weave is 5 stitches wide and 6 rows tall.

Last WIP, another baby blanket. Center is Mountain Colors Barefoot in Mystic Lake colorway, double crocheted. Don't remember what hook I used, but may be size F. It was started last year to be a scarf but now it will be a blanket. The other yarn shows is Knit Picks Essential Solid in burgundy, navy, and dark green. Currently log cabining one inch of the burgundy in garter stitch. When that's done, I'll switch back to double crochet. Much faster that way.