Slightly Biased

I'm addicted. I'll admit it. But it's not a bad addiction.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am enjoying making garter stitch blankets. On the bias. I think it's the fact that they are knitted on the bias which makes them so interesting for me and stops them being a blah knit.

I know not everyone would agree. But that's okay. I can be addicted all by myself.

I am almost half way through the first of six strips that I'm planning on doing for my latest blanket project. That's a start. Not a good one, perhaps, but not bad either. I've used a lot - and I mean, a lot - of small scraps. Some pieces of yarn are only long enough to do one row and then I have to join in another strand. I do have lots of these short pieces of yarn - several in each colour - so I do get several rows  in one colour but it does mean there's going to be a lot of sewing in of ends when I'm done. (I've already started sewing in ends having learnt that leaving them until I've finished knitting a project is NOT a good idea.)

I could have knitted this blanket on a size or two larger set of needles but I do like the look of this denser fabric. It's more like a woven blanket and hopefully won't pull out of shape as much as my other two blankets tend to do (not that I'm complaining).

Still a long way to go!

And since I'm being biased, another bias project that I enjoyed was my Not Cowl'd cowl. I love the colour and the pattern so much that I might knit this in a heavier yarn and make it wider. I only had 65 grams of this yarn leftover from other projects and I had hoped it would be enough. It did make a cowl that can be looped twice but I think longer and wider would be even better.

I used three stitch patterns: a slip stitch pattern from That Nice Stitch, an eyelet stitch known as Irish Mesh, and a textured stitch, Sand Stitch.  The latter two are readily available online but I've not been able to find That Nice Stitch apart from Ravelry so I'm not sure if it's an original stitch from the designer or one that's just not well known. I suspect any simple slip stitch pattern could be substituted. There are some nice ones here.

Each pattern is repeated several times each time it is used, varying each time, apart from Sand Stitch which is always only 8 rows, and each pattern is separated by 6 rows of stocking stitch. To knit on the bias, right side rows begin with knit front and back in the first stitch (kfb) and end with knit two together (k2tog). The first and last stitch of every wrong side row are slipped with yarn in front to give a nice edge. It helps to use markers to mark the beginning and end of a pattern row since when knitting on the bias, there are stitches being added to the beginning of each row and detracted from the end (I hope that makes sense).

And in case you're wondering, I used 4 ply/sock/fingering wool with 3.75mm needles and 48 stitches.

View of the 'wrong' side. 

View of the right side.