Sorting Squares

I finished my squares for my blanket project a couple weeks ago, and now I am on to the sorting and blanketifying process. (Let’s all just pretend that is a real word and move on, shall we.) The sorting process is moving much quicker than the knitting or end weaving processes.

I started by dumping them all out and splitting them by neutral, warm and cool colors so there would be less to separate in each group. Plus I had three bags to put these in and splitting them that way made the most sense.

Then I took each group and sorted by main color. IN this picture of the cool colors, I have purple, blue, and green, even though there are many different shades in each. Those piles were then separated further into their shades, counted, and bagged with the number on them.

Once I had them separated, I went ahead and roughly measured them to even further group them by size. This will come in handy when I go to join them together into blankets.

Of course, at first I neglected to realize my L-square actually measures from the outside edge so everything I was measuring was coming out an inch larger than it really was. I fixed that and catalogued all the colors and sizes in a nice little spreadsheet for even easier reference when I’m setting up the blankets.

Quick facts from the chart:

  • The most popular size of square was five inches by five inches
  • This was a little surprising since I set out to make four inch by four inch squares originally

  • The color that was made into the most squares was white.
  • The only color to not have a five by five square was teal.
  • I managed to only make the cornflower blue squares five inches by five inches.

NaBloPoMo November 2014

Swatching Up A Storm

I’ve got to admit, I was not very good about swatching before starting a project for many years. Most likely because I was using cheap worsted weight acrylic yarn that doesn’t really change gauge much for so long that I didn’t think it was necessary. Using real yarn has taught me the value of doing a gauge swatch first. That and reading the book Custom Knits Accessories by Wendy Bernard. I rarely follow a pattern to the letter, so swatching is pretty important.

I’ve even started washing the swatches to see how the yarn does in a normal wash cycle, so I know whether or not it will be okay to wash the final product. Much better to find out that a small square shrinks than having an oddly misshapen hat or glove at the end of laundry day.

I’m casting on two projects this weekend:Starry Stole (swatch 1) and Zooey (swatch 2). I knit the swatches Wednesday, hand-washed them yesterday, and now I am ready to measure once more to be sure and cast on.

Oh, and my other swatch project is still going strong. Up to 297 out of 400 right now according to my Google+ Photo Album. Only 103 more to go.