That Square

Years ago, not too long after I learned to knit, I took a class where we made the Great American Afghan (GAA).  When I first started the class, I wanted to make every square in the GAA book. But as time went on, I was finding squares from the Great American Aran Afghan (GAAA) book and some other sources and I used them in my afghan instead of some of the GAA squares.  There was one square in the GAA book that was so complicated the course instructor would issue an Advanced Knitter Certificate if you could complete it.  That square is the knitted piece shown in the photo above.  Yep, I did it and it was so much fun!!!

Here are some close ups in black and white so you can see the details a bit better.

I think this looks like shafts of wheat.

This is just a rather cool cable; I think it resembles the cables folks knit to make owls.

This block looks like three dimensional blocks.

This one reminds me of flowers or buds on a tree limb.

I remember I gave up on this square when I was a new knitter; I felt like the pattern just needed more written instructions.  Now that I have more knitting experiences under my belt and I worked through this square, I get it.  This square is entrelac and is knit in 13 segments.  Below, you'll see a little diagram to show you the order in which the segments are knit.  First you make the bottom two triangles and then you knit the first side triangle on the right (labeled as #3).  Then you pick up stitches along the top side of triangle #2 so that you can knit the square labeled with a #4.  Pretty amazing, right?

The one thing that really boggled me about this square was the border around the square.  That is the 13th and final segment you knit.  I could not seem to pick up and knit as many stitches as directed along the top of the square.  Instead of following the pattern instructions, I winged it.  I used larger needles than what I used to knit the square, I used two strands of yarn held together, and picked up about 20 stitches less than what the pattern called for.  I also knit the border all at once on a circular needle instead of knitting the border in four separate sections.  I plan to use this square to make a throw pillow; I just need to figure out how to do that. 

The yarn I used for this is a mystery to me.  My best guess is that this is Plymouth Yarns Encore (worsted weight). 

I have not done much knitting this week.  I better get busy!