Viola is Done!!

 She's done! All knitted, all blocked, all sewn together, and all edged in attached Garnet Heather i-cord.

She's enormous--a blanket and not an afghan for sure. Suitable for wrapping up in when sitting in cold winter sunshine on a sunny deck.

And her abstract glories don't come together in the eye as a flower until you're quite a distance away. To get this full shot I had to spread her out on a tarp on the driveway and lean over the deck rail with the camera, about 15 feet above. But isn't she a beauty?

She will be, I fear, a rather tender flower for all her size and weight. I shudder to think of having to wash and re-block her if something should spill. And she's made of garter stitch, which can stretch too much and get saggy easily. The multi directions of the squares and all the seams add some stability, but still... Should I be seized with a similar madness again, or for the benefit of anyone contemplating such a project, I would knit in a tighter gauge than the one prescribed. Goodness knows, a smaller overall size would be ok, and more density would make it even warmer.

Meanwhile, I think it's time for a well-earned cup of tea on a sunny winter deck.

Goodness Gracious, What's This?

Well, my stars! I do believe these are the last blocks of Viola a-blocking! Crazy to believe that this is all going to look sorta like a flower someday, isn't it?

Fixed It

When last we met, I was having a bit of a boo-hoo in my beer because I screwed up the assembly of the last block. It's all better now, see:

And doesn't that orange line make better sense? No? Well, wait till the blocks go together in the glorious whole.

Alas, I have no more Viola progress to show you because fixing the mess was the last thing I did before leaving on two weeks of travel. And a giant pile of blanket blocks is not exactly ideal travel knitting. Takes up room in the suitcase, for one thing. And the plane seatmates may not be too crazy about your spreading your blanket over their laps while you add on blocks.

So a new project for travel was in order, and I grabbed Willamette and some cheap sparkly sock yarn. (cheap and sparkly, that's me!) Actually, I really think the yarn adds to the theme of the pattern, which is the ripples and texture of the Willamette River in Portland:

What intrigued me about the pattern was the herringbone stitch that makes up the main section, shown here both front and back. (linen stitch on the tails). I had a hard time catching on to it from just the verbal description, but YouTube to the rescue! I found it easy and fun once I saw a demonstration.

Once I got going, I also found that the edging is what amounts to an i-cord knitted along as you go. That might really come in useful some other time, I think. So I just knit along, increasing the width, until I come to the end of the first ball of yarn and then start decreasing through the second ball.

And how do you like my improvised short needles? No use poking your fellow passengers in the ribs when the projects is so narrow.

It's All Lady Sybil's Fault

So it's a Monday night, and I am all snugged up in an armchair with a fresh episode of Downton Abbey (the infamous Series 3, Episode 4) to watch, and The Last Block of Viola to stitch up. I've overcome the frustration of a missing square (knitted another one), I've found a much quicker way to block blocks; it's literally all coming together, and after this last little job and a round or two more of blocking, it will be time for some real gratification in the form of putting the blocks together and watching the grand design of these abstract parts begin to emerge. Thrilling times.

And then this happened:

A pair of squares sewn in upside down right in the middle of the emerging block.  I couldn't believe it. How on earth could this have happened when I've been so careful and meticulous through the 17 previous blocks? I was distracted, dear reader. Something Happens to Lady Sybil (not saying what, get your spoilers elsewhere) in Episode 4, and my knitting concentration slipped. Imprecations and obscenities were muttered, I can tell you.

And then came the quandary of what to do about it. I tried very very hard to forget about it and believe that it would all blend in as part of the abstraction. But, see, that orange stuff is all supposed to come together to suggest the edge of a flower petal, and that just couldn't happen in the current configuration. Rats.

So maybe it wouldn't be too awful to unpick the two offenders (they are in correct orientation to each other, just not to the rest of the whole friggin' blanket), turn them around and sew them back in the correct way. Reader, I tried. But such is the wonder and efficiency of mattress stitch sewn in matching colors that the stitches are in-freaking-visible. Really invisible. Believe me, I looked. I pulled and pressed and separated, but still could not confidently locate the right place to cut and sever the sewn stitches but not the knitted stitches.

With a heavy heart and much gnashing of teeth I realized that the only thing I could do to correct this error would be to cut the offending squares on their side of the seam, pick out the remaining bits of the knitting plus the seaming yarn, reknit the two squares and put them back in the right way around. This called for another deep think about what the harm would be from leaving this mess the way it was. But the weight of 17 correct blocks and 204 correct squares was against it. Maybe (probably) nobody else would notice in the grand overall assembly. Certainly I would run afoul of no Knitting Police. But I just couldn't live with coming this far so successfully just to knowingly leave a big blooper in there. So it's snip, snip, pick, pick, and knit, knit those bad boys all over again.

Damn you, Lady Sybil!

Blocking Blocks Block Unblocked

Whew! I was all bummed out about all the blocking I had to do, remember? All those stupid little squares to wet, squeeze out and individually pin to the board to the tune of a million pins? No more! I found a short cut. Now, maybe you're smarter or more efficient than I am, and you wouldn't have needed to do it all 7 (seven) times in order to slap yourself upside the head and wonder, "What if I sewed a dozen of them together first, and then blocked that chunk? Would it still come out ok?" Well, YES! It turns out that it does:

 On the left, a block done by blocking squares first, then sewing. On the right, a sewn-together block blocked all at once. (And requiring many, many fewer pins!)

So here we go with a lot more blocks in a lot less time:

Glass Caviar

Yeah, long time, no blog. Well--holidays, travel, this 'n that. Mostly I have been hiding from the blog because I have been hiding from, nay, daunted by the task of sewing up all those Viola squares. Yes, the Viola blanket squares are finished, and have been for a considerable time. The daunting comes from the prospect of wetting, squeezing out, and pinning all those danged 4" squares to the blocking board. It's fiddly; it's time-consuming (by which I mean that it uses up a lot of time that a person could otherwise spend actually knitting); it's pin-intensive; the amount to be done in a day is limited by board space and pin supply so you can't just bang it all out in a one-day orgy and be done with it. But I have recently hatched a cunning plan for the blocking and will try it out and let you know how it fares. Meanwhile, this is what I'm up against:

Nonetheless, a knitter has to knit. And when traveling, a knitter needs a portable project. So I wound up some balls and quickly grabbed Southern Sun. I have been fascinated by the prescribed yarn, Riveting (dk/sport weight), a recycled yarn made from reprocessed denim.

Color is Charcoal, best reproduction in the lower left corner. Winter light is really hard on true colors. In person, there's a blue-ish cast to the grey. Not surprising, if it's made of ground-up denim. And the astute observers among you will be wondering what a bowl of caviar with a crochet hook in it is doing here. It certainly confused the dog. Heaven knows what he thought was in the little plastic bag, but he ripped it open in hopes of something edible and found instead indigestible metallic core gray #6 beads. Maybe he just wanted to try a craft of his own--beaded poo. I don't care what he says, I'm not letting him enter it in the State Fair this year. He's more likely to end up on Dogshaming.

And, yes, I am making some changes to the original pattern. Shifted the motif to the other side. Beads instead of yarn-overs for the flower. Longer body, full-length sleeves, higher neckline with some beaded accents, and a beaded echo of the motif on the left sleeve. Just like the pattern, only different.

11 O is Number 206!

Here it is at long last--the last square of Viola has been knitted:

Row 11, column O, seven colors. Now a serious amount of blocking and sewing begins.

Meanwhile, the portable knitting bag seems to be diligently hatching hats.

A Chroma and Capretta ponytail hat and a slightly beaded Undergrowth. Shhh! they're for Christmas!

Portable Peacock

Here, take a peek at the new portable project:

Proud as a Peacock hat by Deborah Tomasello.  It's lovely, absolutely lovely. The colors I'm using aren't the prescribed ones, but the palette is similar, and I have the satisfaction of using some yarns for a kit that I decided was just too fiddly to go on with. The green yarn barely shows up at all, being too close a cousin to the Opal Heather background color (the only color that matches the pattern prescription). Because of the lack of contrast, I have my own plans for the crown pattern. Let's just say that beads will be involved.

What of Viola? She continues, slowly but surely. Only a few squares left now, but wouldn't you know it--I've run out of another color! Rats! I suppose if I were a bit more somethingorother (organized? anal? methodical? thrifty?) I would have knit until I had done all the squares possible with the original yarn quantity, and then ordered all the additional balls needed at once. Lucky for Knit Picks, I'm not that methodical etc. Lucky for me, this is cheap Knit Picks yarn and not baby bison/virgin cashmere/angels' navel lint yarn. (Although that stuff would be pretty soft, wouldn't it?) Anyway, awaiting resupply of Hollyberry this time.

And actually, taking a look at the photo with so many squares bagged up by page awaiting blocking, actual blocking on the board by page, so many squares awaiting page completion in labeled serried rows, I don't think I'm so disorganized, after all!

Resupply

I'm kind of surprised. Today, just for fun, I went through my Viola pattern and counted up the squares not marked off as knitted, and then compared that with the sidebar count, and lo! there was a discrepancy of only 2. I think that's pretty amazing, especially given that I usually update the scorecard with bleary eyes and foggy head just before I stumble off to bed of an evening. And the 2 questionable squares in the equation, I'm pretty sure, are partial ones awaiting resupply of the Papaya Heather yarn they need.

Lo! again!--a uniformed employee of the Federal Government has just delivered said yarn ball and a few others:

It bugged me to have to get just one more lousy ball of yarn in order to complete a few little ridges of garter stitch, until I realized that Papaya Heather is approximately the color of some shades of humanity, and the surplus could be handily turned into a Breast Hat or two. Bonus!

And then you can't just order one single ball of yarn from Knit Picks, can you?  I can't. So I settled on an i-cord edge finish for Viola and ordered a couple of Garnet Heather balls for the purpose. Oh, and a couple of other little things. Shiny! Shiny! Like a magpie loves tinfoil, I have to have me some glittery Stroll Glimmer. And Chroma! I've recently discovered the inspiring hat patterns of Deborah Tomasello. How about Versailles or Mazarin with those two Chroma colorways?

No secret that after finishing the 80 booties, I am filled with lust for a new portable project. What, oh, what will it be? [meanwhile the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble smirks at me from various corners of my house.]

Onward!

OK, so it's time to get up off the 80 booties laurels and knit some more stuff! Remember the snow-dyed tortoiseshell kitty/bunny yarn that was getting made into a Mira's Cowl? I finished it, and here it is:

 The long...

And short of it.
Love this pattern. It's reversible; it shows off the yarn beautifully; it's easily adaptable to any length or yarn you want; it's super easy to knit; and the pattern's free on Ravelry. Couldn't ask for more.

Now that Mt. Bootie has been summitted, it's on to Viola, my other challenge. Two more blocks stitched up:

I may actually have this thing done in time to snuggle up in it when winter is at its dark and coldest!

Bootie-Scootin' Boogie

I'm sure you were tossing and turning last night wondering if I have run out of gas on the bootie/blanket marathon. After all, it's been a month since the last blog post. Actually, you could have checked the scorecard on the right--the numbers are ratcheting up regularly. And feast your eyes on this:

Baby boots among the summer herbs. Actually, the two projects work well together. The booties are small and portable. When at home, the latest boot-on-the-go is on my desk, ready for long telephone calls or online videos. Easy to pick up and take out on the deck, in the car, etc. It's fun to come up with different color combinations, and each yarn feels slightly different flowing through the fingers. It's great to be putting odd bits of sock yarn to good use. (OK, the white merino was a purchase, but it was on sale. I promise! And it's soooooo soft, it was begging for baby toes to cuddle.)

The blanket squares really require an established knitting station with all the current yarns in play in reach, remaining balls nearby, pattern binder, pen, label stickers, scissors...you get the idea. With all of the necessaries to hand and a good movie, I can crank out about 5 squares in an evening, but it's just not a portable project. My least favorite part is the blocking. No matter how organized you are, it's a bit of a headache to keep the squares identified with their labels off and very pin-fiddly sticking them to the board.  The reward comes with the seaming and making a section of the big picture come together. That's why I added the block count to the scorecard. Maybe making notches in the blog will motivate me to block some more. There are several sections ready and waiting.

Progress Is Progressing

Here's what I've been up to lately:

Both concentric squares, a pair of booties, and the latest block sewn together!

The First Blocked Block!

Here it is, the squares from the upper left hand corner, the first chart page, all sewn together in the first block. Not as hard to put together as I had feared because the squares had first been blocked to a uniform 4x4 size. You definitely have to be wide awake, though, and make sure everything is going together the right way around. Like that upper right hand rascal up there--some of the placement only makes sense in the Big Picture. One down and only 17 more to go. Yikes! Still, the squares knitting is rattling along at a decent pace; it's creeping up to the halfway point.

Love, love, love all those beautiful reds together!

Blocking a Block

Sometimes observing what you're doing changes what you're doing. And so it is with a blog. If I weren't blogging about knitting, I would probably crank on with Viola until I had all the squares knitted. Boring, boring, boring, but progress. There can't be that many people cheering just to see the scorecard total going up day after day. Progress, but boring. I've done a lot of squares, but am not even to the halfway mark yet. How long till both the readers of this blog are sound asleep?

Am I getting bored knitting all these squares? Surprisingly, not really. A lot of Netflix is getting watched, but the squares are different enough from each other to keep me wide awake--changing from bias to miter to straight and all different patterns of color now that the plain squares are done.

Still...the part of me that sometimes checks the last pages of a novel before I've naturally got there wants to see how hairy putting all these guys together is going to be. And will it really look like the picture? There's a practical aspect, too. Won't it be a huge headache to sort out 206 squares into the right pattern if I wait till the very end? Much easier to assemble sections of the whole first and then put those together. See? All rationalized.

So I picked out the squares from the first page of the charts and organized them as given on the page:

Now all those labels have to come off as the squares go in the water, but even if they get all muddled, it can't be that hard to sort out only 12. Into the sink they go:

And out into a towel to be gently squozen out:

Then for the blockage! I am really glad I have this gridded blocking board for the task. Immersion, yarn bloom, and natural garter stitch stretchiness has made them bigger than when I originally knit and measured them. So instead of stretching, as happens with blocking lace, a whole lot of smooshing is going on to get them within their 4x4 borders and all squared up instead of diamonded, as the biases and miters are wont to do on their own.

Ta daaaaaa------

Next chapter: the stitching and the burying of 1,000,000 ends!

La vie en Viola

Production proceeds apace on the Viola blanket. Check the scorecard on the right--it's over 50. That's more than a quarter of the way! Here they are piled in a basket:

And this is your knitting bag on Viola--gorgeous colors, aren't they?

But that's not all. Inspiration is blooming all over the yard. This year, in a move totally unrelated to knitting (Scout's honor!!) I chose a big mess o' pansies for flowering annuals. Here they are in all their midsummer glory. Remind you of anything?

Viola Video

I've found some really great videos about the Viola blanket on KnitPicks' site, and I'll share them here so you don't have to go hunting for them. The first is a brief interview with the designer explaining her creation:

But the really great one is where she explains her design process and takes you through what she did to get from a photo of a flower in her garden to a giant garter stitch yarn marvel:

Enjoy!

And take a look at the counter I have installed over there on the side. Nothin' fancy, but it will help us all keep track of bootie and blanket progress.

Bitten

Mosquitoes are biting, but I'm not sure what kind of ambition bug just bit me. I've got a massive case of startitis and this is what has happened--

I got an email from KnitPicks promising a hefty discount and I ran off and ordered pattern and yarn for this:

A Viola blanket. I've been smitten by this design for a very long time; love the almost abstract look of the giant flower, love all the shades of red, the crazy garter-stitchy plan of it, the sheer massive SIZE of it (about 4 x 5 feet, if you're asking). 4-inch garter stitch squares, 206 of them, sewn together in this great big cosy bloom. There are plain straight squares, mitered squares, diagonal squares, and one 4-miters square, most with stripes, just about everything you could do with the form. Here's where I've got so far:

Started with the plain squares, of course. Gauge is pretty close, certainly nothing blocking can't sort out. Did I mention each one of these guys has to be individually blocked before sewing? The blanket of 206 squares begins with the first piece.

But hold on, there's more! My idiocy knows no bounds! My daughter, the nurse, is in the midst of graduate studies on the way to becoming a midwife and Advanced Nurse Practitioner in womens' health. The clinical crowning glory of this is to deliver 40 babies. 40! That's more than a classroom of children.  Enough team members for just about any kind of sports match. The population of a small hamlet. And the first thing that will happen to all these people when they enter the world, will be to land in my daughter's hands. Something to make a mama proud, that's for sure.

So I have decided to knit a pair of booties for each of her babies, 40 pairs, 80 booties total. A celebration of the achievement of the making of a midwife, the making of a new person, and the making of a new mother. Handing on the love.

I've got a secret, though. Because I've been caught on the hop before by the sudden appearance of babies in my circle of acquaintance, I worked up a bootie stash:

That's 9 pairs right there, nearly a quarter of the way to the total, provided there are no other surprise deliveries along the way.

Let the madness begin!