This week, I share a free knitting pattern for a Collaboration Charity Blanket and chat with Leigh Radford.
The Collaboration Charity blanket came about because I wanted to participate in Craft Hope's drive for security blankets for tornado victims, but there was no way I could actually knit an entire baby blanket in less than a month. Well, I could, but not if I wanted to knit anything else.
So, a friend of mine, and fellow Bitter Knitter, Jodie, agreed to help me. We both went our own ways, but made 10-inch and 20-inch squares with machine-washable, worsted-weight yarn. This week's pattern covers how to make garter-stitch, short-row squares in either 10-inch or 20-inch sizes and how to seam squares that don't have equal stitch and row counts.
Four of the larger squares or 16 of the smaller squares will make a blanket that is 40" square - great for a baby blanket. We made three 20" short-row squares, two 10" short-row squares and 2 different 10" squares. The short-row squares all seam together very nicely, because they have the same number of rows and stitches in every section. For the other squares, I had to use a technique I call the "brute force and stitch markers" method.
Basically, I look at how many stitches would be easy to pick up from each edge, and I compare the two. In this case, the short-row squares make edges with 45 slipped stitches. Some squares, which will also make 10" shapes, could have up to 65 rows and 50 stitches to an edge. To deal with that, I count out enough stitch markers to make up the difference. In one case here, one of the other squares had 65 rows in it. I counted out (65 - 45 = 20) stitch markers.
Take the number of stitch markers and add 1. Divide your larger number by that number (65 / 21) = 3.1. Not a whole number, of course. But, it's almost 3. Three will have to be good enough. Three divided by 2 is 1.5, so I start by ignoring the first row on the 65-row square (if my main number here were 4 and I divided by 2 to get 2, I would ignore the first two rows). Then, I place a marker on every third row until I run out of them. Three times 20 equals 60, so I will have a few rows at the end that are hanging out. I then move and adjust markers around until they look pretty even to me. I tend to err toward adding more markers towards the ends of a piece rather than the middle, but I don't think it really matters as long as there isn't just a cluster somewhere.
You could also skip most of the math and just eyeball it. Place one marker in the center of the piece, then two more, dividing the halves into quarters and so on. That would stress me out, though, as I worry about being off by a lot and causing puckers. Also, doing this 20 times would just about annoy me to death.
The markers serve as signposts so that you can ease in that extra row count. Basically, I like to seam as if I'm working a long stretch of grafting. When I hit a marker, I work that marked row back into the row I already worked on the other side. More or less, it decreases that extra row away.
Conversation
I contacted Leigh Radford because I'm madly in love with two of her four books. I suspect I will love them all as soon as I can get my hands on them. Luckily for me, she sells them all on her website.
Links
Books are available from leighradford.com:
One Skein
AlterKnits
AlterKnits Felt
One More Skein
Patterns are available for download or wholesale.
Leigh is on Etsy.
