SYB mods

Liz (Hi Liz!) left a comment about the Sock Yarn Blanket  (SYB).  The SYB is not my idea, it came from the Heathen Housewife and can be found here.  There is a list of steps in her sidebar.  This was my jumping point; there have been mods, many mods.  Here they come.

~First off I chose to use size 2 needles.  This is my normal sock knitting size.  I knit the individual squares using double points.  When picking up stitches down the sides on the squares I begin with a circ and switch to double points when I am down to about 36 stitches.

~I did not use a provisional cast on, just a plain ol’ long tail.

~For the nice edging chain I did my preferred method for garter stitch, which is to knit across the row and at the last stitch slip it purlwise with yarn in front.

~ The original pattern calls for 30 stitches per square.  That felt way too small for me and I intended to do 60 stitches per square.  For my original square/swatch I used the Long Tail Cast On and ran out of yarn at 50 stitches.  I took this as a sign.  So all of my squares are 50 across.

~The original pattern requires you to calculate the width of the finished blanket and make the appropriate number of individual squares.  That made my head hurt.  I wanted to start making a blanket NOW.  So I knit up four individual squares and began from there.  Those four squares led to lots of picking up and knitting of additional squares and the beginning of a blanket, which made me happy.

~One of the suggestions given is to pick up stitches along 4 squares and knit a double sized square.  I think this looks well in a blanket using similar colors of yarn.  My blanket has a wide variety of colors and to make one of them twice as big as the rest would, I think, look funny.  Feel free to disagree with me.

So far that is it.  My blanket is working up in a triangle shape.  Once thee triangle is complete I knit an individual square, attach it to the bottom row and work my way up the triangle.  Once the bottom row is as wide as I need it to be I will begin working on the side squares.  I am sure there will be mods involved there as well.

I have many years worth of leftover sock yarn balls.  In order to keep it random I collected all of the balls in once container.  As I use a ball to knit a square it goes into a separate container.  Once the first container is full I will begin again.  As new socks are knit I will place the leftovers right into the mix.  If you do not want such random results you could knit up all of your red yarns into squares, and then your blues, and then your greens...to get a more striped feel.

As I type this it is dark, I will post a good picture of my blanket in progress tomorrow.

If you decide to make a blanket please post pictures.

Comments

[moiraeknittoo]

OK, you lost me a bit, but it all sounds like an awesome game of slo-mo knitting Tetris. :D And? Awesome. I will have to start something similar myself, I think. Though nothing so organized. Just a bag of squares and I'll figure out the finishing another time.