Category: General Page 3 of 49

The Mitered Non-Cross Blanket is almost done! I finished off all the blocks and spent better part of 2 days seaming the blocks together.

My little helper

When I knitted my blocks, I slipped the first stitch of each row. This allowed the sides to look just like the casted off edge. It also made picking up stitches a lot easier.

When joining the blocks, I single crocheted the blocks together through the back loop of the chained edges. This allowed the edges of the blocks to butt up against each other with a small little gutter in between the blocks.

Joined edge

I don’t know where I read this but I think it was in the notes for a granny square blanket. It was probably the same place that I read about joining them in a zig zag pattern. Hard to describe, but start with a corner and attach the 2 adjacent blocks consecutively, without breaking yarn. Just continue to crochet around the corner and pick up the new block. You will now have 3 blocks connected, with 2 of them aligned diagonally. Continue and work the next diagonal on your blanket, zigging and zagging as you go. I found that doing a slip stitch as you round an outside corner will provide the extra give. And when you come to an inside corner, slip stitch into the corner stitch of the block diagonally away to close the gap.

My idea was that this would create fewer ends to weave in because I will already have enough ends to weave in!

Don’t believe me? A picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case, a thousand ends.

It only took me two years, but I finally finished spinning the singles from this half silk brick from Northeast Fiber Arts Center. I bought the half silk brick at SOAR in 2011. At that SOAR, I also purchased a Golding Micro Spindle. I immediately started to spin it.

As happens to all travel projects, they get very little love when you aren’t traveling. I brought it along to SOAR this year. I didn’t bring a spinning wheel this time so the spindle is what I had. I finally finished spinning the singles at the Spin-In on the last evening.

Over the weekend, I finished plying the singles on my Matchless. After a long soak in hot tap water, per John’s instructions, I hung it up to dry. I squeezed out excess water with my hands and snapped the skein a bit to straighten it out. I then let the weight of the wet silk keep the silk “weighted” until it dried.

And, yes! After plying, what you see on the paper quill is all that remains of the singles. There’s probably a couple of yards left. I couldn’t be happier!

The color is really subtle. The overall color is a dark grey but there are bits of white and green in there. It looks a bit like a black beetle that shimmers in the sun.

I’ve since started the other half brick I purchased to go with this. This one is sort of bronze with greens and reds. I hope it doesn’t take 2 more years before the singles are spun. I have plans for these two silks!

Specs:

• Half Bombyx Silk Brick from Northeast Fiber Arts Center
• Spindle spun;  plied on Matchless with 22:1 flyer
• 2-ply
• 55 grams
• 1,004 yards
• 8,280 ypp