SQUARES SQUARES SQUARES

OOOOOOOOOOOHHH. That’s some good square action.

So. In November of 2020, deep into the pandemic doldrums, I may have had a bit of a *falling down* at the Knit Picks annual sale.

Those eagle-eyed among you may notice the fixins for the Rainbow Hue Shift Afghan and my Handsome Chris Pullover (still on the needles, but at least I’m at the sleeves!), but what is up there at the 12 o’clock position? A whole boatload of Brava Worsted in various jewel tones? What on earth could that be for?

Is all that yarn just begging to be knit up in a bunch of small rectangles?

You bet your sweet bippy it was.

(If anyone knows what a sweet bippy is, please feel free to let me know in the comments. It sure is fun to say. Or type, I guess.) (And also, can we talk a little bit about how moss stitch is the greatest and most attractive of the basic knit-purl stitch combos?) (Is this the first time I’ve done consecutive parenthetical statements?)

During the Knit Picks sale, I bought up a whole bunch of Brava Worsted when I noticed that it was less than $2.00 a skein. I thought, what project could I make with a whole boatload of cheap, but nice quality, acrylic yarn? Another blanket? Wait…that reminds me of something. A blanket that I made seven years ago for my brother and sister-in-law, but always wanted one for myself? Yes.

The pattern is the Warm Up America! Afghan by Evie Rosen from the book Knitting for Peace, which I have loved dearly for many, many years. The colors of Brava Worsted are Sky (28451), Tranquil (28454), Tidepool (28453), Peapod (28443), Hunter (28435), Silver (28450), Freesia (28433), and Sienna (28449). I really lucked out that all of these colors look freaking awesome together, in all of their jewel-toned glory, as I was kind of limited in terms of stock by the time I got to the sale.

There are eight different stitch patterns listed in the pattern, so I made one of each with one of each of the eight colors, ending up with a 64-block blanket, rather than the 49-block original. Knitting each square is super portable and simple.

But the finishing…oh, the finishing.

Since each square (and yes, I am aware that they are rectangles, 7″ x 9″ to be exact, but the word ‘rectangle’ is not nearly as fun to say) has slightly different dimensions and behaviors due to the differing stitch patterns, they need to be aggressively steam-blocked to size after the knitting.

Once you get all of these perfect little rectangles…then the sewing begins.

It’s really important for me, for some reason, to make sure that things are random, but that there were no repeats of a stitch pattern in a row, and no duplicate colors next to each other. It’s pretty much impossible to do this without repeating a stitch pattern in a column for this, without making a perfect little diagonal rainbow situation, so there’s two areas in there with stitch patterns too close for my comfort, but we’re all about learning how to let the little things slide around here, right?

I sewed up the columns first, mattress-stitching all of those short ends together.

I mean, purple and turquoise together? Every seam was a joy.

Then, the vertical seams. A daunting task, since it’s really ideal to sew the whole thing in one 6-foot long go. A whole lot of Anne with an E and Degrassi were consumed during this process.

This was the first perfect corner that I experienced during this process. And normally, who cares, right? The edges lined up. Big whoop. But no, this is a real triumph, considering that each block is a completely different number of rows and you need to try to make them match up seven times over the course of the column, using the same strand of yarn for sewing.

I was so delighted whenever this happened, that I took a picture of it nearly every time.

Want to see? Yeah, you do.

Now, some are more perfect than others, but each one is just a microcosm of lovely saturated colors and squishy texture that just makes me so freaking happy to be able to make a blanket, you know?

Like, I can use my hands to make something to keep someone warm. After more than 20 years of knitting, it still blows my mind sometimes.

There were an intimidating amount of ends here. (Do you want the math? Of course you do! 2 per block is 128, then the two each every time I had to change skeins, so 32 more. Then the sewing up is 2 more per short-end join, which is 14 per column, so 112 there. Then two more per column, so 14 more. And the crochet border is 2 more. 128+32+112+14+2 = 288. Dang.) So I kept sewing them in as I went along, doing one column at a time. Also, I did the messiest, half-assed-est job ever because it’s a blanket just for us and the cats, and who gives a shit, really?

The border is three rows of single crochet, just to give it a nice solid finish, plus I wanted to use up as much of the yarn as I could.

This is me wearing it last night right when I was finished. And then today the border got steam-blocked so it could get its glamour shots.

Oh yeah.

I have long subscribed to the theory of juicies and blahs set forth by the good ladies of MDK, but somehow this thing ended up almost all juicies.

And it looks so fucking good.

It’s super fancy neon disco farmland, and it’s all mine.