Leftovers Blanket

The day is finally here!  After 14 months of work and leftover bits from 34 different balls of yarn, mostly Palette, the Leftovers Blanket is complete!

That's 13 squares by 16 squares or 208 individually knit squares of sock weight  yarn.  You can see bits in there from just about all the fingering weight projects I've knit since around April 2010, including Autumn Rose, Venezia, Arisaig, Christmas Stockings, Ivy League Vest, and a number of others. 

I knit those balls of yarn down to their very last yards and sewed them all together into this blanket.  I didn't even have any extra squares--I had 208 on the nose! 

Now all that remains of my Palette stash is one half of the Asphalt Heather that I used for the icord border.  I had hoped it would finish that off, but I suppose kitties will be getting some updated cat toys instead.  Oh well!

I used a tutorial by Shelly Kang found here.  Her version called for knitting each new piece by picking up stitches from already existing pieces, but I preferred to knit each individually.  My way was more portable, but made for a lot more finishing at the end of the process--about a week's worth of sewing.  But now it's done, yay!  Here's a close up of the little mitred squares:

 My way also meant that my little diamonds don't all point in the same direction.  There really isn't a reason for this except that I was lazy and didn't think Branwen would care.  Should you decide to dive into this project and wanted to sew everything together at the end (not recommended on either count), there's no reason why you couldn't sew them all in the same direction. 

 In all it was a very easy project, but it was also majorly time consuming.  If you don't have an extensive collection of sock yarn bits, you should probably stay away.  However, it was great for using up some useless stash of mine and as a long-term project with no real deadline. 

My other big reason for knitting this blanket was as a distraction for Little Kitty.  For some reason I'll never understand, she loooves to knead handknit fabric.  This is a major problem for anything I might want to give away or wear later--no snags kthxbai. 

But now she has her own designated kneading blanket that she can enjoy without destroying more projects.  I've already found her kneading it a couple of times and she sure likes to lie on it.

She looks happy, right?  Enjoy it, Little Kitty!

Now that that crazy project is done, I can focus on my other WIPs, like Mel's shawl, a cowl for me, and more in my dishcloth series.  Next time, if I finally manage to give them away, I might have my crazy pay it forwards to share!

Car news: I have a new car!!  I decided to go with the Mazda3 and I'm already in love!  It's red and shiny and has all the new toys my Protege lacked (I mean, that thing didn't even have power windows!).  Very happy, yay!

Cheers,

-Allie