Knitting: KIP – Seed stitch knit blanket (queen size)

Yesterday evening, I started my long-term knitting project. I’m knitting a queen size blanket.

That afternoon, my two skeins of Patons DK superwash ‘Welsh Coast’ yarn had arrived in the mail and once the yarn had been rewound on my yarn ball winder, I started knitting. I cast on 400 stitches and decided to utilize the simple seed stitch for the stitch pattern and although I was going to knit the entire blanket using the ‘Welsh Coast’ yarn, the fact that the yarn ball was so small ( a little over 100 yards) quickly made the decision to go an alternate route. Why did I only order two skeins of yarn? Since I placed the order online, I wanted to see if the color in person matched what I saw online and it did. I thought that there were at least 200 yards per skein, but I was wrong. That was my fault, I didn’t read the description closely. I just assumed it would be the same yardage as I’m used to with their worsted weight wool.

Last evening, I started knitting with the second (and my last) ball of yarn and so early this morning my daughter and I went to AC Moore where I purchased three balls (all that they had left) of Patons Royal Purple in worsted weight. Since I had a 50% off Michaels coupon, I was able to use that coupon on one of the yarn purchases.

In total, I’ve knit a little over 12,500 stitches and as you can see I have many more stitches to knit before I’m finished this blanket. I think the earliest I could finish this project is four months from now, by that time, we won’t have below zero or single digit temperatures and so I won’t fully appreciate the warmth of a 100% wool blanket until it gets cool again, but I will still utilize that blanket. To compensate for the different weight of yarn, once I swapped to worsted weight yarn, I dropped down a needle size (size 10) and I’m not seeing any difference on the edges.

My Hiya Hiya cable extenders and end stoppers arrived today for my Hiya Hiya Sharp (Large) interchangeable knitting needles and so I was able to add another cable (34″) to my 60″ cable. Which gives me a total of 94″ of cable. I’ll purchase another 60″ cable and swap out the 34″ cable.