Patchwork Lap Blanket (2011)

Pattern: Made up as I went along, with a border from "Around the corner crochet borders"

Yarns: ShiBuiKnits Merino Kid (#229, approx 1,100 yds); Koenig Farm Spinnery Kid Mohair ("Bird of Paradise", approx 1,000yds); Caron Simply Soft (Sage, 7oz ~350yds)
Method: Hand knitting
Completed: January 26, 2011.

I've been inspired by the many beautiful patchwork quilts that people make -- colourful geometrics. However, sewing and I do not get on nearly well enough to even contemplate taking up quilting. Instead, I wanted to try to knit something like that: working each piece of the panel as an individual knit module. So, here, I started with the centre diamond, then picked up the edge stitches to be the base of the next triangles, and their edges for the next triangles, etc.

I made it as 9 patchwork panels, and then added the crochet edging on each, and crocheted them together. Finally, I crocheted a simple border around the whole thing. As this might be used as an extra layer to cover legs while sleeping, I didn't want anything to "loopy" in the crochet edging -- things that could catch fingers, for eg. I liked this edging (#25 from Edie Eckman's "Around the Corner Crochet Borders") because it also had an angular shape, like the shapes in the patchwork. The whole thing is 4'x4' (each panel is about 16" square).

It was easy to get into sort of a "rhythm" as I was knitting -- each panel's components presented obvious milestones ("I'll finish this set of triangles", etc). Which caused me to also sort of note how long things were taking. This was interesting because it told me that the whole project took about 100 hours (8 hours per square, and then more time to weave in ends, block, edge each panel, and then put them together and put the border on the whole thing). It was also interesting because it reinforced that I'm not good at predicting a timeline -- in theory, that gave me enough data to project when I'd be done. In practice, I guess I was optimistic about how much time I have to knit. Well, running out of the yarn I'd brought on one trip, with 2 days of meetings and an all day flight home, spelled frustration, and put me so squarely behind schedule for Christmas delivery that I gave up trying.

	Draped -- loveseat for scale.
	Closeup of the centre panel
	Detail of the edging -- side and corner
	From the back side! Not really reversible, but this is at least somewhat presentable.
	In progress: The left 2 pictures show a corner square being knit up, using the live stitches from the "bottom" of a triangle, on the left. In the rightmost picture -- pre- and post-soak and blocking. The blocking caused the whole panel to "unfurl" properly.
	Assembly! Single crochet edging on each square. Slip stitch to join squares. Strip of three squares.

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