January is crafting season
Jan. 11th, 2026 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThe weather sucks in January and I spend more time inside than outside, even for a relatively balmy January. This January I am working on an afghan for my couch. I spend a lot of time on my couch at home and it has "an afghan" but it's not a great one and I want a great one.
Process knitters kind of do their own thing without regard to patterns or instructions or... (much) planning. So, this is going to be my afghan that I am making for me, the way I want. A pattern was not consulted nor were there any design considerations beyond "about how big is an afghan?" and "what do I want it to look like?"
In terms of goals, I would like to work off some stash that I acquired in a free-ish sort of way, in particular stash items from this adventure that also brought me the orchids. I'm planning for the project to use up a fair amount of stash because whole afghan takes a lot of yarn.
The afghan is going to be made of squares (better portability than doing a whole afghan which is difficult to wrestle after a certain point and also who has circular needles that big anyway?) that are 40 stitches wide (this entry is also notes for me so that I can make squares that are reasonably similar to one another) and square, done in irish moss (k2, p2 for two rows, then p2, k2 for two rows, repeat the whole thing) on a long-tail cast on. I need a stretchy cast-off to use uniformly so that I have all the squares the same. Probably going to have to google that.
The afghan is going to be done in brown and white and brown/white 2 ply handspun. There is a fair amount of brown 2 ply ready to knit, which I have assembled into center-pull balls with my nifty ball winder (also acquired free of charge, see here) but also I have more brown could-be-yarn-with-some-effort-on-my-part in the stash. It's not quite the same brown color, but it's an afghan and relative brownness is not that major of a concern for me. I think it'll be fine.
There's a ton of white commercial roving in some sort of wool, which is nice enough to work with for the white squares. I've moved the wheel into the living room and oiled it up because I haven't touched it since the brown sheep sweater. And I did the better part of a spindle out of the white, most of which is pretty decent single. Turns out that you can not-touch the wheel for a couple of years and it'll come back to you fairly quickly once you try again.
Irish moss? Isn't that a lot of moving around of the hands? No. I can knit continental or English or both at the same time with two different colors. I have skills. If you have any interest in doing seed stitch or moss stitch or irish moss, being able to do continental will speed you up considerably.
The squares for this afghan will be about 9" by 9" in an "ish" sort of way because it's a fucking afghan and does not need to fit anyone for real. The whole afghan will be 6 squares wide and 7 squares long. It'll be in brown squares and white squares and brown/white flecked squares (made by combining a brown and a white single for two-ply). 42 total squares. 14 of each color, so that's cool. I should probably wash and block the squares before putting the whole thing together.
Anyway. Irish moss afghan in progress.
Process knitters kind of do their own thing without regard to patterns or instructions or... (much) planning. So, this is going to be my afghan that I am making for me, the way I want. A pattern was not consulted nor were there any design considerations beyond "about how big is an afghan?" and "what do I want it to look like?"
In terms of goals, I would like to work off some stash that I acquired in a free-ish sort of way, in particular stash items from this adventure that also brought me the orchids. I'm planning for the project to use up a fair amount of stash because whole afghan takes a lot of yarn.
The afghan is going to be made of squares (better portability than doing a whole afghan which is difficult to wrestle after a certain point and also who has circular needles that big anyway?) that are 40 stitches wide (this entry is also notes for me so that I can make squares that are reasonably similar to one another) and square, done in irish moss (k2, p2 for two rows, then p2, k2 for two rows, repeat the whole thing) on a long-tail cast on. I need a stretchy cast-off to use uniformly so that I have all the squares the same. Probably going to have to google that.
The afghan is going to be done in brown and white and brown/white 2 ply handspun. There is a fair amount of brown 2 ply ready to knit, which I have assembled into center-pull balls with my nifty ball winder (also acquired free of charge, see here) but also I have more brown could-be-yarn-with-some-effort-on-my-part in the stash. It's not quite the same brown color, but it's an afghan and relative brownness is not that major of a concern for me. I think it'll be fine.
There's a ton of white commercial roving in some sort of wool, which is nice enough to work with for the white squares. I've moved the wheel into the living room and oiled it up because I haven't touched it since the brown sheep sweater. And I did the better part of a spindle out of the white, most of which is pretty decent single. Turns out that you can not-touch the wheel for a couple of years and it'll come back to you fairly quickly once you try again.
Irish moss? Isn't that a lot of moving around of the hands? No. I can knit continental or English or both at the same time with two different colors. I have skills. If you have any interest in doing seed stitch or moss stitch or irish moss, being able to do continental will speed you up considerably.
The squares for this afghan will be about 9" by 9" in an "ish" sort of way because it's a fucking afghan and does not need to fit anyone for real. The whole afghan will be 6 squares wide and 7 squares long. It'll be in brown squares and white squares and brown/white flecked squares (made by combining a brown and a white single for two-ply). 42 total squares. 14 of each color, so that's cool. I should probably wash and block the squares before putting the whole thing together.
Anyway. Irish moss afghan in progress.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 06:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 03:31 pm (UTC)I used to think this stuff was pretty obvious, but it's ... not.
Quilted Northern famously did it wrong. After that, they corrected their depictions to be of actual quilting instead of some sort of knitting-needle abuse.
Call The Midwife also did it wrong in a very obvious way. Nun is holding a "granny square", a crocheted object made with crochet needles. It is not possible to make granny squares with knitting needles. Similar level of wrong to the Quilted Northern ad.
This sort of wrongness really bothers me because doing better is not that difficult.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 05:36 pm (UTC)OMG - wait - this was in 1997? Okay, well, that's why I never saw it - I was 22 and in my 'no tv available to me regularly' time :D But I am shocked my mom didn't see it and mention it :D
no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 11:51 am (UTC)My current project is frogging (unraveling, for the non-lingo-savvy) works-in-progress from over the past 7-8 years. Tons of "my hands are bored, I'm just going to start a new thing" - sometimes with pattern and sometimes without. It's been incredibly soothing to work on giving myself a clean slate/permission to not finish something I started. Plus now I've reclaimed a bunch of cool yarn, including a skein-plus of some really nice handspun.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 01:12 pm (UTC)It is totally OK to unravel projects that for some reason didn't make it to the finish line once the shiny wore off. I have some that I'm still... thinking about revisiting but others that I did unravel and repurpose. It frees up yarn for Other Things, too. Kind of a no-shopping score. Even if it's really kinky, you can put it on a niddy-noddy (mine is made from PVC, super classy and stylish plus it disassembles for storage) and re-hank and soak/thwak to restore the original structure.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 05:32 pm (UTC)It was probably the size of a king size blanket when it was done and it was HEAVY - and warm! we used it as a sofa cover, and then if you wanted a nap, you would curl up on the couch, reach up and pull the top half of the afghan from off the back of the couch and over you :D
I don't know what happened to that afghan - it probably was donated or thrown out after my mom died. I don't remember seeing it when I was cleaning out the house, but I wasn't thinking particularly clearly, tbh.
I hope to see photos as you go!