Progress!!

So I've been working at assembly ... for a while.  Last week I drew a diagram, and along with some measurements will show me exactly how many I have left to add.  I can check off each triangle as I go.  Thanks to my trusty calculator, I did some more math, and discovered that I have only 149 more triangles to crochet.  Plus about a zillion little black circles.  There are still plenty to be attached, but the grand total is WAY less than what I originally calculated. 

 Also appearing in this picture is the edge of the dresser my Grandpa built, and my roommate's cat who was waiting until I left the room to relocate her nap to the new blanket.

Some assembly required ...

I decided to take a break from making triangles (current tally is 542 completed) and start piecing things together. Sewing them into two-color strips goes pretty quickly, but the rest is a bit more challenging. They are a bit too rounded at the corners to join nicely like I wanted.  After consulting my good friend Google, I tried steam-blocking them.  It worked okay, but the purple ones seem to be consistently smaller than the others, plus it would have taken forever, so I abandoned that idea.  This necessitated something to fill in the gaps.  After a couple of attempts, I came up with a pattern to make little black rings that fit nicely.  I think I've found a winner.  They're tedious little things though.  Ugh.  I seem to always forget what an onerous task it is sewing squares together and weaving in a million ends.  Maybe this time I'll learn my lesson.

Colors!

Lots of colors.  I've finally gotten to the last set of colors.  My current tally is ~80 orange/yellow, ~50 each of red, green, and blue, and a half dozen purple.  So many triangles.  But I wanted to see the color scheme as it looks in triangle form. 

Bag o' triangles

Lots and lots of them.  A little over half of the orange/yellow ones done.  Then I got sick of looking at orange and yellow and have switched to working on green.  I have a long road ahead ...

Here we go!

Well.  It's finally here.  Both the yarn and the Olympics.  So here we go!  Go Team Canada!

Knitting!

I'm not a good knitter.  But that is something I would like to change.  And as I learned in 4-H in my younger days, you learn to do by doing.  

I found a pattern in Lens Mills (sidenote: this is a fabulous store) a few weeks ago for a cool scarf-like thing and picked up some yarn to make it.  My sister claimed the finished project before I'd even started it.  

A number of years back, I found a book on knitting in mom's archive of crafty books/magazines, and thought it would be fun to learn.  I learned a basic knit stitch, and had a scarf-to-be that I would work on from time to time to practice.  That has never been finished.  I also learned how to make the frilly scarves with the special yarn while killing some time at the curling pre-trials in November.  These are super easy, and my sister claimed that one too.  

This pattern however has an added twist.  Haha, twist.  I've never used a cable needle before.  I came to know what one was when another lady in a craft store saw me browsing the wall of hooks/needles and asked if I saw one.  At the time I had no idea what it was.  But before I'd found the hook that I wanted I'd found the cable needle for her.  

I am going to the good ol' U. S. of A on the weekend to pick up yarn for my massive blanket project, so in the meantime I started this little doozy.  I lost track of how many times I had to redo the first 6-8 rows.  But now I seem to be on a roll!

Triangles

 

So the olympics are coming up soon.  I love sports, and the olympics are no exception.  This mean that I will be (and currently am because of all the qualification broadcasts) spending a LOT of time in front of the TV.  So I like to work on bigger projects.  This time around I'm considering creating a blanket for my new bed made of triangles like this (squares are ... square).  If this happens, I would like to put some sort of a backing on it to make it into a proper blanket, but we'll see how far I get.  I found this fun triangle pattern on Carina's Craftblog (carinascraftblog.wardi.dk).  The color scheme is still tbd at this point.