The Bluestocking, where the short days shorten and the oaks are brown

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome all, regulars and newcomers, to the Bluestocking Women's Pub, a place of refuge and inspiration and camaraderie and silliness, where all alcoholic drinks are non-intoxicating, cakes contain no gluten, sugar or calories, but still taste yummy, and the attentive staff are small but very professional rodents wearing snazzy little outfits.

Other roles - such as acting as foot stools, looking decorative in the garden, or just being impossibly cute when you need something impossibly cute to go awwww at - are filled by a team of miniature pigs, quokkas, wombats, etc etc.

If real life is difficult, you can bring your troubles to the Bluestocking and a comfy chair will be found for you at a roaring fire, a miniature pig will settle down happily to support your tired feet, and a gerbil will serve you promptly with a comforting drink - very large G&Ts or massive mugs of hot chocolate with extra cream and marshmallows are popular choices [don't forget: no calories in the Bluestocking].

The last time I knitted a jumper, which was ages ago, I used a crotchet hook to draw wool through the seams.

A friend bought me a Toft crotchet kit, beginner, for my birthday. I'm hopeful the instructions will be simple and clear enough for me to follow.

Those blankets, posted upthread, were beautiful, so neat and even too.

Thanks! They're only strips towards a blanket. I could turn each one into 'Milton the Earthworm' at the moment. 😂

Those kits are lovely.

Myrtle, how thoughtful of them to mention what kind of stitch they are going to use to close the wound, so you'd have something needle-work-related to post here😄

I hope they haven't got any ideas about picking up the stitches and crocheting a border......

Hoping for the best possible outcome from all the oodles of tests and procedures and things you've been going through😐

I did once read an article in the Nursing Times, about a theatre nurse who ended up buying a zip, which was put into a patient. The patient had had cardiac surgery but, for some reason, needed the would reopened and drained every few days, and the surgeons couldn’t work out how best to keep the wound openable, but closed to prevent infection - and the nurse suggested a zip.

She bought it and it was sent for sterilisation, and was sewn into the patient. When the need for reopening the would was over, they removed the zip and closed the wound.

True story.

@lcakethereforeIam wrote
The last time I knitted a jumper, which was ages ago, I used a crotchet hook to draw wool through the seams.

I’ve joined Woolly Hugs blanket squares together by this method. It’s quick and neat, but I like a flat seam on the right side and it’s raised when I do it.

The magic of mattress stitch with something like the side seams on a jumper is that you can’t see the seam at all when it’s done. It’s like one continuous piece of knitting, but the structure is stabilised by the seam behind it. @ifIwerenotanandroid will get that stability with her blanket anyway because of knitting in strips.

This story gives me shivers, because there are so many ways zips can go wrong - burst, catch in the seams, get gunked up and not slide any more. I’m glad it worked for the patient in this case.

I wonder if someone has now patented a medical version?

@ifIwerenotanandroid , I wonder what the advisor had in mind when they said if you add edges to it after the event, it just takes the edges with it & rolls up again

I’ve knitted over a dozen of these, where you knit squares in strips, mattress stitch them together and then add a border, and have never had that happen nor read that anyone else from the hundreds of other people who buy the kits has. Apart from beauty that’s the point putting on a border. The borders need to be knitted predominately in garter stitch or seed stitch, though. A stocking stitch border of only two or three rows would indeed do what your advisor says, so don’t do that. 😀

There’s also something called a rolled edge which you can use for necklines, where the stocking stitch rolled edge is a decorative feature, but that’s not what you’re looking for here.

I've also never had a garter stitch border roll up on me, and it's the quickest and easiest kind to do.

Fuzzy is being very modest about her knitting achievements - like togging out all the family in these lovely jumpers and hats😁

[recycled image from previous thread]

It was somewhere on reddit, not this one but this pic is exactly what happened with my strips (long thin strips knitted in one, not small squares sewn together):

https://www.reddit.com/r/knittinghelp/comments/1h7wcuz/finished_piece_keeps_rolling/

This looks useful (linked from that thread):

https://nimble-needles.com/tutorials/how-to-keep-knitting-from-curling/

Haha...I think we found a job lot in TK Maxx!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5072884-corpus-2?page=31&reply=147801225

A reply from Justine today.

After waiting two hours to go down to theatre, surgery was delayed to 8pm.

At 6.30pm surgery was cancelled. No news on when it will be scheduled. Hopefully tomorrow.

The blankets I knit are made in strips, the Woolly Hugs ones are separate squares.

Oh, Myrtle, I am so sorry to read that. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

That’s so disappointing @MyrtleLion 😢

Most of the squares I've knitted came with a border of four knitted stitches.

I meant to ask if anyone had ideas about the blanket design. I could put together a large blanket 8 x 10 squares (48" x 60") or some 3 x 3 squares (18" x 18').

I have the squares but no idea how to put them together to make something lovely. Looking back I think the infection has meant I haven’t been thinking straight.

I think the pictures are a couple of threads back. If anyone has any ideas how to put the colours and patterns together, that would be great.

I’ve looked for the squares, Myrtle, but my searching skills aren’t up to it. I don’t know how to search just for Bluestocking threads, but I imagine someone else can help.

This won’t apply to your squares as I imagine they are very true to size. However, one general thing I can say from assembling Woolly Hugs blankets is that the ‘squares’ can be very approximately the size they are supposed to be but when put together they can make a very harmonious whole.

That is so frustrating, Myrtle, when you had prepared yourself for surgery and then it was cancelled at short notice. I hope it happens tomorrow so you aren't left in limbo for another day.

I found this image of you looking very relaxed and being pampered by a whole team of gerbils

Was your surgery being organised by South West Railway? They had had the wrong sort of engineers on the line over the weekend so everything was fucked up in multiple different ways today. Hope they can sort you on Thursday, I feel quite sad about you being stuck in there without them finishing soeprting the problem.

The picture hasn't shown up yet.

These are the squares.

The group with the gold squares don't have borders.

That's lovely now I see the image 💙

Would love to see a pic of your strippy blankets.

Myrtle, how frustrating about the cancellation. Had you been fasting? Hope you had some kind of treat after all that.

I guess paler colour squares for the little blankets, or a random scattering of colours for one large one - but I always find random still takes a lot of thinking about, to get a good spread of colours. You have to work hard to make it look effortless & perfect!

Glad will be more help than me with the technicalities of putting them together.

ETA Still astonished that you mastered complcated knitting so quickly.

Maybe you could ask KnottyAndAuty (did I get that right?) to advise you, Myrtle.