I'll Be Mitered!

So I'm mired in Christmas projects right now and am currently working on the one that will probably take the longest, a blanket for my nice Lorelei. When I first started looking at patterns I knew for sure that I didn't want to do another Pinwheel Blanket as I've already made two of them but I still wanted something that lent it's self to being multi-colored and could be made from yarn already in my stash.

I found the Mitered Square Afghan Project and really liked the look of it, and the fact that it was modular, so I immediately copied it onto the back of an old receipt, grabbed the oh so delightful Knitpicks Shine Worsted, cast on, and voilà it was done.



I was really impressed that it only took me a couple hours to complete, and while I was sitting there musing at my own speediness when a few things occur to me that A) it kind of looks a little long in one corner, B) looks like a bee, C) is really not all that large and D) has an awful lot of strings hanging off of it.



I lined it up on my trusty cutting mat to find that it's roughly 8 1/4" square though the one corner does kind of curve it's way up to 9".

I kinda stared at it for a while and did the math for a descent sized blanket I'd need 36 squares which would give me a blanket roughly 48"x48", with nine complete squares. The other thing I realized is that I only have 3 colors in this yarn and for the sake of not messing up the gauge & care instructions, I decided it would be best to use all the same yarn. As I sat there contemplating the square and fiddling with the 18 loose ends, it started to dawn on me that I was going to have 36x as many ends to deal with. In addition to sewing all those squares together into bigger squares and then sewing them together into an even bigger square.

Oh boy, am I in big trouble. I really tried to think of a way to knit the 1/4 squares together as I went, but as of right now I can't think of a way that will give it the same look. SO, new plan...

I remembered that in the Knit-A-Long book there is a pattern for a mitered square using sock yarn called the Barn Raising Quilt. I thought that it would work just fine on bigger needles and I could just keep going until it was the size I wanted, as for the hole a the center I could knit or crochet a flower to sew into it, if it still bothers me when the blanket is done.

I started it last night, and got a decent amount done.



Today I was able to move it off the DPNs and onto my 24" circulars, and lay it out to see how it's looking. Right now it looks pretty yellow, but I don't think that will last all that long and I think that so long as I sandwich the Terracotta colored yarn between two bands of the Fedora it wont clash.