Tag: hexagon

It is finished.

According to my Ravelry project page, it took me a year to knit this blanket. Though I’m fairly sure for 6 months of that time, I had it stuffed in a basket that was then piled high with fabric. It took me a while to fall in love with the pattern. But, I did. Perhaps it was all the stitches that one must pick up in this pattern that caused me to initially hide my head in the sand. I was never very good at picking up stitches. Thanks to this pattern, I’m a pro and speedy to boot.

Speaking of the pattern, let’s talk details. I hope you want to know the stats because I am dying to share them with you. I took notes just in case you wanted to knit a hexagon blanket too or just in case you are curious. Either works for me.

Pattern: Basic Two-Needle Hexagon by Barbara Walker
Located in a 4th Treasury of Knitting Patterns book
Page 16 in my copy

Size of finished blanket: 60″ diameter
Size of individual hexagon: 20″
My gauge: 5 sts per inch on size 6 needles (though as mentioned previously, I’m a very loose knitter)

I originally made a hexagon about the size featured in the book by casting on 25 stitches. Yet, I knew Dan would find me on a train headed to the funny farm if I had to knit 20+ hexagons and then stitch them altogether. Learning from my swatch, I cast on 55 stitches. The rest of the instructions I followed to the letter. I even used 2 colors like Barbara recommended. After the first hexagon was finished, I became lax and perhaps a bit confident in my picking up skills. Finding her instructions on how to pick up exactly 55 stitches tedious, I stopped counting and proceeded to pick up only the stitches that were easy to pick up, skipping stitches at random. Rarely did I pick up the correct number. I usually had 2-4 stitches too many, but I solved that problem by quickly decreasing the extra stitches on the next row. Can I tell you that it made the hexagon just that much more enjoyable to knit? And how! As happy as I was to finish knitting before the weather got hot, I was sad to be done with the blanket. Though I’ve never knit a pattern twice, this is one pattern I would gladly make an exception for.

Now as you know, this blanket was a yarn hog. I made 2 trips to my LYS and still had to order extra yarn from a fellow Ravelry user. In the end, I used 8 skeins of Manos del Uruguay Wool Clasica in natural, colorway 14 for the MC (main color). I even needed a 9th skein to stitch all the hexagons together. It was that close. For the variegated yarns, I used 3 balls of Crystal Palace Taos and 6 skeins of Noro Kureyon in colorway 250. If you plan to use Noro throughout the blanket as the CC (complimentary color), then you’ll need closer to 10 skeins.

Oddly, when I finished stitching all the hexagaons together, I didn’t like the blanket. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t as amazing as I had dreamed it could be. It looked like a bunch of little stitches with 3 different types of yarns. No angels descended from on high and sung to me. It just didn’t happen.

And then I washed it and blocked it. But more importantly, I left it at my neighbor’s house in her upstairs room to dry (she had the space to allow it to dry flat). Walking away from it for 2 days and not looking at it allowed me fall in love with the blanket when I saw it next. I think I had been too close to the blanket for too long. It looked so mundane to me because it was commonplace in my hands. Now, I truly love it again.