Friday, March 11, 2016

Norah's Vintage Afghan: Block #2


Block #2 is complete.

I love how the photo above looks like something under an electron microscope (playing with the filters on my iPhone... again).

The color for this block is called "black currant"; I just love it.  I took this photo in the window in my craft room. I think it's going to be difficult to get good photos of blocks completed in darker colors.  I have not yet blocked this block.  This block is incredibly dense and knit up smaller than block #1.  And only 6 grams of yarn was left at the end of this block (so I used 94 grams for this block... killer math skills, right?).  I find it amazing that this block used nearly an entire skein of yarn!


Two photos; two slightly different angles.

This was a really fun block to knit.  I love that when I knit these blocks (so far), I find that I don't have to have my eyes glued to the chart as much as I thought I would.  There are four different cables in this block but two of the cables are repeated more than the other two cables.  Instead of thinking "what does the cable highlighted in hot pink" mean and "what does the cable highlighted in pale pink mean", you really can just look ahead at your knitting in order to see what cable needs to be completed next.  That is, one of the cables is worked over p1,k1,p1 and one cable is worked of three knit stitches.  So if you just look at the knitting, you just know what cable comes next. 

I had some struggles in the second half of this block; I am blaming knitting in poor light in the evening.  I had some instances where I dropped a stitch on the last row of the chart and never noticed it until a row or two later.  Yikes!  I got pretty good at fixing things by just isolating the stitches involved in the "cable gone wrong".  Yesterday, I was wanting to finish this square so I brought it to my Thursday knitting group.  I was working the very last row with cables on the final pattern repeat and I screwed up each and every cable. It was a disaster.  The cables were all in different directions; right, left, over, under.  I even had a place where I had held the yarn in the wrong place during the cable and there was a weird strand of yarn sort of hanging out on the front of the cable.  Lesson learned. Don't knit complicated cable projects and be a Chatty Cathy at knitting group!

I just looked ahead at Block #3 and it looks amazing.  I think I am using the colorway called "cracked pepper" for that square. I am looking forward to casting that on really soon. 

I have also been working on two pairs of socks.  One is a pattern we are calling "Jerri's Crazy Socks" and I'll post about that very soon. 

Today I have class #3 of my Building Blocks afghan series at my local knit shop. It should be a fun, busy day!

Happy Knitting!

5 comments:

Sheila said...

Hi Kim your block looks great. I'm on row 6 of the first repeat and had a question about the blue section which overlaps the ''b" and "c" repeat sections. Do I just continue that cable pattern past the marks on that individual row? I'm trying to get used to the charts and I agree once you figure out the cable patterns the knitting goes faster than I thought. Knitting by myself also saves on ripping back to mistakes!! Also a had just a slight bit more yarn left in my first block then you did. Hope to finish block 2 soon and move on to 3 soon but company coming this week for spring break. Happy knitting.

Kim said...

Hi Sheila: I love that we are knitting this afghan at the same time. I imagine that our individual differences in tension can impact how big our squares turn out or how much yarn we end up using. My first block seems so loose in comparison to my super dense, heavy second block. I hope I understand your question about Row 6. Basically, this is how I read this row. Knit 1 and then purl 3. Then complete the BLUE CABLE over the next the next 7 stitches. After that purl 5 and then complete the BLUE cable again. So just keep on working purl 5 between the BLUE CABLES and then eventually you will finish a BLUE CABLE and you will have only 4 stitches remaining. Over those last 4 stitches, purl 3 and knit 1 to finish the row. I hope that answers your question. If not, let me know and I'll try again! :)

Sheila said...

Thanks Kim. That's what I figured had to happen. Hope to catch up to you this week.

Kim said...

Great. Glad that helps.

Motherof4 said...

I’m so confused on the increase row. It says (K1, M1, K2, M1) 27 times. If you’re only casting on 57 stitches, that’s too many stitches! How am I reading this wrong?! Please help!