knittingkonrad

Last december I have had some days off from work and so I started to work on my x-factor blanket, designed by Kaffe Fassett and featured in his book “Knitting with the color guys”.

I do love Kaffe’s designs, especially their colourfulness and this blanket really caught my eyes. It is knitted in Rowan Summer Tweed a a beautiful, rustic, dry handle tweed. Cotton: 30%, Silk: 70%

As you all know, I’m constantly and passionately knitting, but I do not prefer big projects which takes a long time. I do prefer projects that last for about 2 to 3 weeks and then doing another work. Projects that need more knitting time may get an WIP for a long time, cause I surely find another pattern to knit or an birthday of a family member or friend is getting close.

But as already said in December I have had some days off and so I started to work on that blanket and knitted all 48 squares in about 3 weeks.

Meanwhile I have posted a picture of Rowan Colourscape chunky, which I have bought to knit the Pineapple Blanket, also featured in “Knitting with the color guys”.

Soon afterwards I received a private message on FB from a woman, who also started to knit the Pineapple Blanket and asked me to start the blanket to knit it together.

First I refused her request, cause I was knitting the squares for the x-factor blanket and wanted to sew them together.

But this never happened!

Because I have to do a birthday present and so I knitted Frosty St.-Martins-Cowl using Rowan Yarns Frost a soft to the touch metallic yarn in an Alpaca (20%) and Viscose (80%) blend.

Then I started working on my Sunbearer design, calculating measurements and knitting samples and finally knitting the whole garment. For this garment I used Rowan Yarns Baby Merino Silk DK a machine washable blend of merino wool (66%) and silk (34%).

Afterwards Rowan Yarns released a new Mini Collection featuring the fantastic Kid Silk Haze Stripe.

Readers of my blog already knows that Marie Wallin teased me to knit Simply Jealous? a sweater for a man with this great yarn.

The progress of this work is documented here.

The x-factor blanket looked like this at this time.

About 800 ends to weave in before sewing the squares together! I was not amused and I was not in the mood to do this, cause I wanted to knit something, without measuring and calculating. And so the Pineapple Blanket came back into my mind and I started to knit it.

Every day knitted 40 rows and within about 2 weeks I finished the whole blanket.

Finally after designing and knitting Wintertime, so long I came back to the x-factor blanket and started to weave in all ends.

The pictures of all the squares can be seen here.

Yesterday I finally finished the blanket and I’m happy wrapped in it.

But although I maybe passionate about knitting here is an example being passionate of yarn and have such a patience doing such stunning work: I’m still in shock!

“woolen wings” by Mona Abdel-Rahman
“Raw fleece: 3 days to wash and dry; about 2-3 years to hand-card the wool and spin on a Turkish drop-spindle; at least two 5-10 day sessions of natural dyeing; another 2 weeks skeining the wool; 7 months to knit the blanket; one afternoon to machine wash and “full” (shrinking process to make it more durable)”
photo by Tom Fiero