Support thread for 3girlies' blanket

[tribpot]

Following on from our previous support thread please check in here if there's any help, particularly (but not exclusively) knitting help, you need for the squares for 3girlies, who sadly lost her beloved 6-year-old dd Flora recently.

The details of the blanket project are here and it directs you to the Crafting Guide on Woolly Hugs, with specific sections for crocheters and knitters. I am still maintaining the original document mostly because I haven't got around to separating out the stuff that's already on Woolly Hugs now from the newer suggestions we've had in the last few weeks. So please, by all means do send me suggestions for new patterns or ideas.

For those of you on Ravelry and participating in the Ravellenic games, I think squares could be entered under a number of categories such as balance beads, doubleknit boxing, lace longjump among possibly some others.

[NeitherShreddedNorSmug]

^luck of course

[NeitherShreddedNorSmug]

Though I'm sure you look good too

[AfternoonDelight]

Going well so far. If I can pull this one off I'm going to try one of the other letters. This is such a lovely cause, I'm so glad to be a part of it

[RatherBeOnThePiste]

Evening all

The most marvellous woolly mountain arrived at mine today, all gorgeous, and all full of love and thought. Was for expat, Giraffes and mumof2, but I know the lovely crafters are on here, so a huge and heartfelt thank you X

[KnottyLocks]

Hola

I am finally back in a world of consistent Wifi. Hurrah.

Lovely to see all the creativity in full flow.

[RatherBeOnThePiste]

Bless you Joyful, I'll have the wine later, but all I do is shuffle round a few PMs X

Definitely have the wine though

Now my DD is making a square for 3g, it will have a lot of love knitted into it, plus quite a lot of tense moments where she thinks she has dropped a stitch, but the love will outweigh those She chose a lovely teal blue. She has got to 2cm It was lovely showing her but she now wants to crochet and i was thinking maybe just start her off with a granny, does that seem a good place to start?

[KnottyLocks]

I reckon a granny square is a good place to start. I found them much easier to get to grips with than horizontal rows when I first started.

And bless her heart

[PurplePidjin]

Grannies are much easier than stripes. Go RatheBeOnAGreenRun :o

[LollipopViolet]

I think I'll attempt a granny square. Each time I've attempted rows I've never got on with them. And they look pretty :)

Pistey, how old is your DD? I think it's sweet she's getting involved :)

When/if I get to an OK standard, I'll get some Debbie Bliss and do a square to post off :) There will be a lot of love in mine too, and probably a few little mistakes stupid eyesight, I'd be fine if the thing was 200x magnified

[PurplePidjin]

direct.Hobbycraft.co.uk/products-Purelite-3-in-1-LED-Magnifying-Lamp_349493.htm

Only x2 magnification, but i didn't look very hard...

[LollipopViolet]

Pidj, I was kidding, but thanks for that, it's quite interesting :)

Well, I've learnt how to make a circle of chain stitches, so I'm slowly getting somewhere. The next bits look tricky, so you might hear screams echoing round the midlands as all my stitches undo themselves (again...).

[PurplePidjin]

Sorry, i get very cross when nt's assume that because a person has x disability, they can't do something

[MinnieBar]

Triiiiiiiiiiiiib!

Er, probably too late, but I wondered if there's a way of getting this pattern to 6"??

Whaddya reckon??

[TeamGlaikitBritain]

Minnie, now I know I'm no match for Trib in all things knitting,but seeing as that pattern calls for thicker yarn and bigger needles, I would try it as written with the dk and 4mm needles. If its a bit wide there are 4 stitches of a border at each end of a row, you could bring that down to two.

I stand to be corrected though!

[MinnieBar]

Well I wondered that Glaikit but it starts with a Sl1 on each row so I wasn't sure if I could just cut those out .... 35 stitches on 3.5mm needles comes out at about 6" for me (I am rather loose, it would seem) so I'd need to lose 6/7 stitches. Hmmmm.....

[TeamGlaikitBritain]

Sl1 I sort of count as a k1, it just gives a different edge. Remember the pattern might tighten your knitting too. I would give it a bash see how it comes out. He hookers will have dealt with bigger challenges!

[MinnieBar]

Ok, I think if I ignore the slip stitches (because the edges won't show anyway) and cut the border down to 2 stitches per side then that takes me down to 38 stitches, which is practically there... although I'm now really confused by why the diagram only has 28 stitches on it. Or am I reading it all wrong?!

[RatherBeOnThePiste]

Evening Woollies

Lots more thank yous on the threads tonight

[TeamGlaikitBritain]

That's beyond me Minnie

[tribpot]

Right, here we go

Although the chart and the written instructions are showing you the same pattern, they're showing them in very different ways. I also think there's a mistake in the stitch count and the square is 45 stitches wide, not 42.

The pattern's actually 39 stitches wide (313), with 6 stitches of border, 4 on one side and 2 on the other. (The imbalance is straightened out because the pattern itself includes two plain stitches for the gaps between one set of flames and the next). The chart only show you one repeat of the candle pattern but appears* to be 28 stitches wide because it shows you all the blank space where you are creating a stitch by doing a yarn over so in the row below that stitch didn't exist. But of course, you are also compensating by doing a k2tog in the same row, to keep the total number of stitches the same. This isn't very easy to express in a chart!

The fact that stitch one is slipped doesn't matter, it just creates a nicer edge. For the sake of having something for Knotty and Pistey to get hold of, I would do both stitches even if it makes it slightly wider than 6". The other thing I'd say is the edge is going to be quite wiggly, and I think the author's blocked her example quite a lot to make it square.

So ... the simplest way to reduce to a manageable number of stitches is to cut out one repeat, so instead of doing 3 candles, do two. That makes 26 + 6 = 32. You could then go a bit mad and bung on a couple of extra border stitches, or just knit on 4mms instead of 3.5mms to get you to 6".

[TeamGlaikitBritain]

You are my knitting goddess Trib!! I thought it was something to do with YOs and k2togs, but you know me and charts don't really go!!

[tribpot]

That's a particularly trying example of a chart as well, Glaikit. Imagine my surprise that our Minnie was the one to find it and try and punt it around

[MinnieBar]

Well, you know I have been busy of late but I've still been aware of this gap in my knitting life, this absence of a really good challenge?

Admit it Trib, you love the patterns I bring

Ok, I'll go for a two-candle with extra border if I can work it out

[tribpot]

They are lovely patterns, it is true, Minnie.

Doing a two candle repeat should be easy if you follow the written pattern, as every row is do [x] 3 times. Obv do twice! For the extra border, you can either just wing it with the 6 stitches it already has, i.e. do 32, or you can add a 'knit 2' at the start and end of each row. You do have to keep track of them though! In case of severe need, you could use stitch markers so you can see which are the border stitches (in other words, I really really cannot face writing the pattern out tonight!)