So near and yet so very, very far

I have now knitted 98 out of the 100 squares for my Double Vision blanket. I don’t have an updated picture since it seemed silly to spend knitting time taking photographs instead of just finishing it!

There are various reasons why I haven’t finished knitting the squares (exams, celebrating the end of the exams, recovering from celebrating the end of the exams) but I realised this week that even when I finish the squares I don’t have enough yarn to knit the border. The idea has been creeping up on me for a while but I have been firmly in denial. Now that I’m down to half of my last ball of black yarn, keeping in mind that the whole thing is knit with two strands held together so you go through yarn twice as fast, it is time to face the fact that that is not going to be enough to finish the contrasting strips between squares and knit a 5 row border all the way around.

I decided this morning that this must mean that there’s an error in the pattern and it underestimated the amount that I would need. So, I checked the pattern:

• 150 grams each of main colours
• 400 grams of contrast colour

400 grams? <Insert expletive here> So why did I only buy 200?

Now, I do have some niggles with this pattern. There is a bit missing in terms of knitting some of the contrast strips between squares. It’s easy to work out what to do but it is missing. Also, the method suggested for sewing the strips together isn’t actually physically possible. It has clearly been copied from another pattern without anyone checking to make sure that it was appropriate for this one, which it is not. Again, not a big deal and I really don’t need a pattern to tell me how to sew knitted strips together. It turns out though that the one thing I can’t blame the pattern for is me running out of yarn.

I have now ordered more yarn from Cucumberpatch and since I have to finish the squares and sew everything together before I knit the border anyway, waiting for yarn is not going to hold up the blanket at all. It’s just a little embarasssing.