so after the steek, whats next ?

Today - after I and some readers had recovered from steeking, here is the flat un-edged blanket. I did have some comments on how scary it was, especially in email from Gillian. I also felt challenged by a suggestion to knit the facing in checkerboard garter stitch! Thanks Marina, it probably would look good, but I am not quite ready for that yet. Maybe on a smaller blanket? So this post is a quick review of how I went about the faced edging to cover the steeked cut edges, and do the same for the cast on and cast off edges to keep it all matching. Work has been very busy, our 3rd year students started back, and straight into their major project, lots to set up and have ready, and it seemed there were 65 million emails to go thru after taking 2 weeks away from work. Plus a new work laptop tablet so 2 nights gone in making it talk to the wireless, and setting it up 'just so' and a night lost to a parental school committee meeting. So the blanket edge is all that got done since the last post.





But this is a knitting blog so here the knitting update.
I picked up 960 stitches around the edge of the blanket, I kid you not - 960, just to be clear that was nine hundred and sixty. That is 3 for every 4 rows down the sides, and one for each stitch across the top and bottom, and that, my friends is 960! I worked 5 rows in stst in the round, using paired increases every 2nd row and put those stitches on hold. Then I picked up matching stitches from the wrong side, picking up the green yarn on the reverse, and knitting a matching facing, same number of rows and same increases. You can see the steeked edge peeking out from between the edge facings. I had almost every small circular I own in use, I knitted on the 3.25mm ones, but used the smaller 2.5, 2.75 and 3mm ones to hold stitches on edges i wasn't working on. There was lots of sliding stitches from one to the other so my 'working needles' were the right size.

Then the -making two stitches become 1 row, I knit as if doing a three needle bind off - but didn't cast off. This neatly sandwiched the cut and cast off edges between the two facings, and concealed them amazingly well.







These last two images show a few working rows of the moss stitch. Here we have the right side,


and here the wrong side
so now there is just a 3-4 cm's to knit to complete the facing, in moss stitch, so it stays nice and flat. I'm off to get more yarn tomorrow, between the farmers market and the swimming lessons ... and post again soon.