2012 Knitting challenge

I've decided to take on a knitting challenge for 2012. Inspired by a fb share from a grad school classmate, I'm knitting at least two rows per day on what eventually become a blanket.

At thirty stitches per row, two rows per day, and three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, it's going to be a lot of stitches (21900, to be exact. Oh! It's a leap-year, so that would be 21960).




The original project is a conceptual knitting project from Lea Redmond, at Leafcutter Designs. The pattern is for a sky scarf, two rows knit per day in colors that represent the sky for that day - blues and whites and greys.

my sky colors

I wasn't keen on making a scarf, but still wanted to embrace the idea, so I've decided to make each month into a square, and in the end, knit the squares together into a blanket. I mentioned the idea to my sister and my mom, and they wanted in on the action, too. Rather than all three of us knitting sky squares, Mom will be knitting tree squares, and G will be knitting ground squares. By the end of the year, we'll have thirty-six squares to represent the year 2012 in Vermont.

We've opted to go with Knit Picks Palatte Yarn, in part because of the variety of colors; at a fingering weight ("kind of thin" for the non-knitters out there), using two strands at once isn't too thick. I'm also keeping track of the colors by day on paper; this proved helpful whilst waiting for my yarn to arrive.

sky record

Like any good project I start, it's already been ripped out several times in an effort to figure out what size square was best, what size needles felt softest. Note to self: knitting two strands of yarn together makes for a messy unravel. It's a good think I have incredible patience.

The nice thing about this project is that it is fairly simple; with no fancy stitches - only garter stitch - a beginner could easily take it on. The only challenge would come in keeping the yarn from getting too tangled as the year progresses.

So, it took a few starts, but here's the start of my contribution to the blanket:

january 1-19, in stitches

More to come - there are twelve months in the year, after all.