a puzzle

There was extreme trepidation as I put the blanket into my machine and washed it on cold and gentle spin. Every label indicated it was safe to do this.

When I first took it out I thought that there was some mild fulling for one colour.

I hung it up to dry and tried not to be too sad.

Tonight as I sat to trim final ends and write this update post, I started looking and realized it's because one of my yarns while I thought was similar, is actually a much lighter weight! so this feels denser than the others! So that's on me, and a different issue I'll need to explain, but it's all fine and nothing felted or fulled. YAY!

Tonight I had a very long zoom meeting and got all the ends woven in. I think I was the only one not upset that it ran long because there were more than I realized as I changed colours more frequently than I thought. Next it gets a bath... in the washing machine. This will be a scary moment of truth if all the yarns are actually machine washable (cold) as the labels said. I normally hand wash everything, but it's going to Israel and I would rather know now if it doesn't work!

I finished the puzzle blanket tonight thanks to my beloved assistant Dot. She made sure I stayed focused to the end. I planned to complete this with some blue but I guess I used up all the blues in my stash and I found some purple to work in its place instead.

this is not at all how I envisioned the blanket when I started. It’s lovely and I hope makes some one cozy and feel safe.

I joined the second ball of light tan and each ridge is feeling shorter.

There’s still quite a lot to knit and ends to weave. Thankfully Dot takes her role seriously. We won’t discuss her helping me with the yarn earlier when a ball escaped my bag.

On the way home from a site visit this afternoon I discovered I’d picked up a stitch and joined in the wrong spot. It was enough of an error I knew it would bother me. Instead of trying to fix it in the car like last time I set it aside until I got home.

With the picked up and passed over stitches it took a bit of brain to figure out how to do and I’m thrilled I did it!

even I can no longer tell which row I fixed.

shabbat shalom.

This morning at coffee I carefully ripped back the two and a half rows and corrected both the color change and at this point, joining with the first section. I'll use various tails to fix the first 5 rows. Hopefully. It's a very subtle colour shift, especially when worked at night with poor lighting!

Yesterday i started the fourth section of the blanket and today i joined another ball. Some of my stitch counts are creative but I think it’s going to work out.

However two small things:

1. I forgot to start joining this fourth section to the first. I am on autopilot.
2. The second ball was joined and I was knitting merrily along while watching tv. I took the photo and then kept knitting. As I was packing up for the night I noticed that the ball of yarn isn’t the colour I thought it was.

That means at a minimum I’ll undo enough to work the colour change consistently with the rest. I think that’s two and a half rows.

Then I need to think if I can drop down the edge and join it, or if that’ll mess with tension too much. I may simply seam it because i know my stitch count is off so I need to fudge it.

I'm finally past the pink sections. The third triangle will be light blue and two shades of tan.

It took longer than I expected because I needed to repair the decreases in the white section. More than once I decreased on both sides.

While this isn't a difficult repair, I don't recommend performing it in a moving vehicle.

But it is nice now to be working on the third triangle and be working in light blue.

I do have another ball if I wanted to get my ratios exact to my initial plans for this blanket, but I'm not a fan of pink on a good day. After this ridge (may I make it through this ridge) I will switch to the next colour. That's Antique, a creamy off white, for the remainder of this section. It cannot come too soon. I am tired of knitting pink.

That said, everyone who has seen the blanket of pink in person agrees that as far as pinks go, this is a good pink.

One we can look at without having our teeth ache from sweetness.

It's very interesting how the pink shifts perception of the blues, everyone asks me what purples I've used.

A short day trip on Sunday helped me finish the first section. I’m knitting this at coffee after minyan and it’s my evening tv time project. Very slowly I’m making progress on this second section. It does help that each ridge is a stitch shorter than the prior one… at least until the next section.

I started this blanket last week. I reworked for my gauge and that it is destined for Israel. The design is interesting and I appreciate decreasing for each section.

My challenge is that I don’t necessarily have enough of each intended color so I’m deep diving in my stash.