Mitered Square Blanket Finished

Yesterday morning I finished the last stitches of the I-cord border of my mitered square blanket and took the blanket with us to photoshoot it on the meadows near Zlatnite mostove. The blanket is big - 190 cm long and 120 cm wide and taking a decent picture of it does require space :) According to my Ravelry notes, I started the blanket on January 6th last year, so it took me almost a year and a half to finish it, or rather to stop knitting it, as I had been considering it finished for the last month and then continued adding rows and columns of squares to it to enlarge it in length and width. And I could have continued doing so happily, but I ran out of yarn and I didn't want to spend any more money on this project. As Leonardo da Vinci put it - art is never finished, only abandoned (me being cheeky :)))

Although I didn't work on the blanket for long periods of time, it was always there as an easy project to revert to when I was feeling down on a current project or in between projects and I honestly feel somewhat sad and empty-handed having finished it. And for the first time in ages I don't have a WIP, not even an abandoned one - I'll have to think of something quickly, as I seem to have forgotten how to function without my knitting :)

The blanket weighs about 1250 g and is 24 x 15 squares, 35 stitches each. The yarn is YarnArt Jeans, 50% cotton 50% acrylic, about 90% of which is hand dyed. When I started the blanket I had just found cotton dyeing and I wanted to play with a few balls of this cotton acrylic blend I had in my stash. However, while knitting the blanket in winter I found that it was not very warm, not even close to wool warm. In terms of practicality it would be definitely wiser to choose wool, maybe some wool/nylon sock yarn. However, in terms of pleasure to knit and dye I would always choose this soft and easy to care for cotton/acrylic blend.

Pattern: Mitered square blanket
Yarn: YarnArt Jeans, 1250 g, hand dyed
Needle: 3 mm
Time to knit: 1 year 5 months

Mitered Square Blanket: Progress Update

I had abandoned my Mitered Square Afghan for a while, but I've been back to it and knitting it with full speed. I passed through the point where it was big enough for a cover for our balcony sofa, but I decided I wanted it a full size blanket. I'm enjoying it so much! However, because I started it out of cotton/acrylic blend, it is not as warm and cozy as a wool blanket and I'm seriously considering a second one next year, out of wool/acrylic blend. Dyeing all the tiny skeins of yarn and then turning them into colored squares is simply too much fun :)

: A few progress pictures

: And this is how I join the squares. Instead of picking up stitches with the new yarn, I go with a small sharp needle (I believe it's a US00  - 1.75 mm needle) through the bumps of the garter stitches of the square to the right of the new square - this makes 17 new stitches

and then I continue going through the square to the bottom of the new one and further create 17 more stitches + 1 in the middle, a total of 35 stitches.

Then I fix the new thread and directly start knitting the new square with my 3 mm needles.

The last two squares of this row are done. I've decided the width of the blanket to be 13 squares, which is about 1 m wide now, before washing, but given how garter stitch stretches, I expect it to grow to at least 1.20 m wide.

As for the length, I've knitted 14 rows of squares so far (you can see on this last picture I've added a whole row of squares to the blanket) and I intend to make them probably 23 or 24 rows. I'll have to go downtown today and buy at least  400 g more of white YarnArt Jeans to continue my blanket. The final product will be about 1 kg in weight.