Knitting In Public

I have been bitten by the afghan square bug.

The Knitters’ Guild has begun a year-long service project to knit 8″ x 8″ squares for afghans, to be sewn together at the January, 2010 meeting and given to three charities chosen. You can read all about it on the Guild website or on the new Guild Community Service Blog. I wrote about this awhile ago, and that I’ve been involved in the service committee to come up with the idea and (for now) I’m in charge of the blog.

I wanted to be sure the project started with a bang, and that at least *some* squares were collected right away. Hopefully that would inspire others to contribute.

I have been working mostly with just two skeins of yarn, and I’m amazed at the number of squares I’ve produced out of just those two skeins, and I still have some left!

Here are the squares I submitted today. The patterns are all on the Guild blog (in case anyone wants to knit a few and contribute to the project).

This is the 2 x 2 stripes. (You’ll be seeing more of these two yarns.)

This is “Parquet Squares” - and the start of my skein of red and skein of white which is lasting forever.

This was a fun pattern to start and I have some ideas to make several more. One of the squares submitted at the Guild meeting today was two shades of brown and all I could think of was chocolate! (Go check out the community service blog - I know it’s not the same as “in person” but perhaps you’ll see what I mean.)

This is the “Heart Square”  Easy to do, of course, except that the heart is duplicate stitch. I must admit this is my first successful duplicate stitch attempt.

This is Moss Lace Diamonds. Listed as “challenging” but was a pretty easy knit.

Lastly, I tried my hand at shadow knitting for the first time. I also decided that I could get some variety in the squares by using dishcloth patterns - and that is what this is, modified slightly to get the correct size. Speaking of size, I discovered that nearly all my squares were too large, once they were washed! I’ll have to watch that on future squares for the project. In addition, I discovered first-hand the truth of the caution that acrylic yarn doesn’t really block at all - it just goes back to what it was before blocking!

This isn’t the best photo - as I was walking around and glancing over at the drying/”blocking” squares, there were certain angles where this looked like a plain, red and white striped square. The magic, of course, is when it’s viewed at an angle:

The center square becomes white, and there is a solid red heart in the middle! (This picture is also not as intense as some of the angles at which I saw it last night - but I was in a hurry for photos and this was “close enough”.) I’d also like to make a few more of these in different color combos. Since this also grew quite a bit, I would actually make the pattern as listed instead of adding stitches and rows I thought I needed to make it the correct size.

I think all of these squares were finished in just two evenings (each). Not a long time commitment, and I know I’m not the fastest knitter around. I’m sure others could finish these in much less time. I just finished posting the March patterns on the Guild blog, and I’ve already finished knitting the “Horizontal Chain”:

I decided to wait to submit this one, since it is a March pattern. (I didn’t want to confuse anyone!)

Of course, I’ve also finished the “Twining Trees” square that will be for July, I believe.

We’ll see how long this fascination with squares will continue…. I’d like to make some squares specifically for baby afghans, too (one of the charities is Bundles of Love).

Inbetween squares, I’ve been working on the Anemoi mittens (Mary & I are attempting to finish our mittens started over 2 years ago) - I’ve completely started over as I originally used gray and black yarns and was soooo uninspired. I’ve changed to black and aqua, and I’m much happier. I’ve also started work on the Lillyfield mittens, using lace weight yarn, doubled. I bought this yarn for last year’s Sock Madness, but was bumped from competition before I got to the socks requiring the lace weight. So far, I’m happy with the results. I’ll post photos of both once I get a little more done on the hand. Right now, I barely have more than the cuff - not too exciting for blogging!

I’m also slogging away on a few other projects, but the squares and the mittens are definitely getting most of my attention. I’m off now to spend time knitting!

Memories shared with friends and family weave the unique fabric that is our lives. Photos, letters, cards, schoolwork…all of these are little reminders of people and times in our past. Sadly, these mementos are occasionally lost to moving, fires, and sometimes just the ravages of time.

All three of us had personalized Christmas stockings, hand made by our mother. Each was unique and it’s amazing to think we’ve had these for over 50 years.

Last year, Anne discovered that her stocking had become ruined while in storage - mold had attacked her stocking and there was no way to clean or repair it.

By the time I found out about it, it was too late to try to do anything - but this year I was determined to try to replicate her stocking. I used mine as a template for size, then copied the above photo to an approximate equal size, then cut out the letters and figures to use as a pattern to create a new stocking. Of course, the photos were never close-ups for detail, but I hope I came close enough to help recapture the memories of her stocking for many more years to come.