Baby Blanket

Grand kids keep a person busy.  They arrived on June 22 - their French Northern Ontario school quits a week earlier in June, and goes back a week earlier at the end of the summer. 

Since then, we have taken in a Blue Jays  game, a trip to the Bass Pro store,  studied for and taken two boat license exams, a girls' shopping day for Abi and I, watched the Canada Day parade from a branch in a tree along main street, visited the Elmvale Zoo and had Chinese food for dinner at the Crystal Buffet.  Not to mention numerous swims in the neighbours pool.  Needless to say there hasn't been much knitting.

But I did manage to complete & control the baby blanket.  Marie's suggestion to crochet a chain over my much-too- holey holes worked wonders.  The trim went on easily and  the blanket is now gift  worthy.

Pattern:  Eileen Montgomery's Mitred Afghan

Yarn:  Bernat Softee

Knit on the machine at tension dial 4.

What I learned:  I need to practise machine short rowing .

My only complaint now is that the blanket seems to stretch on the diagonal.  This means some fussing is required when laying it out to make it lie smoothly.  But since baby will destroy smooth in seconds, it is not an important  issue.  

The colour choices are great - excuse my modesty - bright and cheerful for a baby.  All in all a great baby blanket which I would remake in a minute should any more relatives present me with a baby. 

Rescued

It pays to have friends who think outside the box.  Friends one step removed from the maelstrom of a disaster knitting project.  Friends who can, from their un-involved, vantage point,  see the forest through the trees.

When I last posted about my un-giftable,  'holey' baby blanket, it looked like this.

  

Some kind readers offered a few suggestions for repair and rescue.  Laurie M suggested - I thought -  a ribbon woven through the holes.   Laurie later corrected my interpretation to say she meant to sew a ribbon over the holes.  Great idea.  Marie H suggested I crochet a chain along the holes to close them.  Great idea.  Since I had no ribbon in the house but did have a crochet hook, that is what I did. 

Baby blanket rescued. 

Good enough to gift - and dang if it doesn't look as if that was the original idea. 

Now it is back on the machine for the trim.  6 stitches over 8 are picked up and 16 rows knit.  A few stitches are skipped and the process repeated. It gives a loopy kind of I-Cord-ish trim.

 

Trim that will probably drive both baby and Mom crazy but it does add a bit of design flare.

My goal was to finish it before my grand kids come for their 'Gramma-cation' as machine knitting and kids are not my thing.  But that will not happen as they arrive today.  Hopefully there will be some stolen moments over the next two weeks so blankee doesn't have to remain hung up for the entire summer.   

As always, when the grand kids arrive, Grandma cannot get to blogging on a regular basis.  So I wish you all a wonderful summer.  Thanks for reading and I will check in as time  and Internet access in Hearst allows.  See you on my regular beat in late August.

An Ineffective Match

What happens when you pair  a knitter with mediocre, machine knitting skills together with inexpensive, acrylic yarn?  Not something that can be gifted, that's for sure.

Bare with me on the details here.  This blanket is knit by casting on  enough stitches to give the desired, blanket dimension.  After knitting two, edge rows, every following  row is short rowed, then 'long' rowed back.   ' Bring one needle out of work, knit two rows.  Repeat until all needles are out of work.  Then repeat the process in reverse until all needles are back in work.'  This knits one quarter of the blanket.   

The problem is -   well, take a look. 

From  a distance,   it looks acceptable.  But up close ? 

 

Either the knitter or the yarn has issues. Or both. Either way, the rows of holes  are not nice enough for a gift.  Laurie M suggested I thread a ribbon through them.  While a good idea, I am not sure they are even good enough for that decorative solution.

Now, the question is, do I re-knit?  Having already knit it one and a half times, am I still interested?  Or  should I as  son #2 often advises,  "Cut your losses, Mom." 

The thing about 'cheap' yarn is  -   it often isn't.  While not a fortune, enough was spent to make this fixed-income senior seek forgiveness for the idea  of throwing it in the garbage. But seeing how poorly it knits and feels to the hand, do I want to spend more time with it?  Probably not.    Do I want to knit a gazillion baby sweaters, hats and booties with el-cheapo yarn just to satisfy  my banker?  Probably not. 

Think I'll think on it for another day.