Monthly Archive: July 2016

Ask the [Knitting] Hive Mind: Favored edging for blankets?

[covert-ops] question mark (forest)TL; DR: I have knit the front of (what will be) a double-sided baby blanket. Please feel free to share your favorite blanket edgings with me!

Operational Parameters (or: Some Restrictions Apply)

I’m open to pretty much anything, but there are things that will definitely make me more or less inclined to jump with joy at your suggestion.

  • At least a marginal level of interesting. The blanket’s original pattern provides an edge pattern. It is boring. Thus my search for a new edging. 1
  • This is for a baby blanket. For some inexplicable reason, designers of baby blankets include a lot of lace or loops or the like. To me, that just screams “place to grab and hold onto a baby finger or toe.” 2

Blanket Mechanics

  • Yarn: The blanket is knit using eight colors of Cascade Superwash Sport.
  • Gauge: About 6 stitches per inch on US 7 needles. 3
  • Construction Details: As mentioned, I have just completed the front side of the blanket.
    • It is 164 stitches wide, and 397 rows tall.
    • I used a provisional cast on.
    • I have put the live stitches from the front onto waste yarn. This leaves both ends of the front and the back exposed in a manner ready to accept any matter of mayhem. 4
    • Essentially, I will have two pieces of 164 stitch x 397 row stockinette. The goal is to end up with a single fabric comprised of those two pieces joined together with wrong sides facing one another.

“Left to my own devices” == “brain run amok.”

3D humanoid holding a clear light bulb.“Sure!” says my brain. “The edging you’ve worked out in your head for this baby blanket will absolutely work!”

My brain starts using the voice of that one childhood friend. You know the one I’m talking about. Your parents can’t quite tell you not to be friends, because s/he never does anything wrong, exactly. But you do seem to get a statically significant larger amount of trouble whenever you spend time with him/her.

Got the voice? Let us continue.

My brain wheedles (in the voice of my own personal Eddie Haskell), “So what if you’re going to have to learn three separate new techniques in order to get this to work? You like to learn, you like to fiddle with things, you like to do semi-complex math where you can’t trust your solutions because you’re not quite sure if you even have the formulae correct. This will be awesome!

And this is how I have come to this point. The point where I am crocheting a chain of 1,250 stitches for a provisional cast on.

What could possibly go wrong?