A blanket for seriously cold people.
I started writing this pattern in the autum of 2oio. The plan was to send it away to my grammy for Christmas, December hit and I was nowhere near finished so I put it in a basket and put it in our storage locker. She got a scarf that Christmas. I pulled it out a year later and finished it! It will be sent to her for this Chrismtas. It's such a cozy, large, voluptuous blanket. I decided to put the pattern out there for other people to try.
A note on gauge:
This pattern is so simple that swatching isn't really imporant, the blanket will turn out whatever size it turns out. I knit mine out of eight balls of Cascade Magnum on 15mm needles and it turned out around six and a half feet long and four and a half feet wide. Cozy!
Notions:
One pair of 15mm needles in at least a 24" length circular.. Somewhere between six and eight balls of Cascade Magnum or between 738 - 984 yards of super bulky Yarn Embrodery needle (for cast off) Knitting directions:
Co 120 stitches
Row l: k2 (p2, k2) repeat brackets until end of row Row 2: p2 (k2, p2) repeat brackets until end of row Repeat until you lose your mind (or run out of Yarn - whichever happens first) The blanket it knit in k2, p2 rib - so you'll be knitting the knits and purling the purls on both sides of the blanket. Cast off loosely! I prefer the sewn bind-off method (tutorial on last page)
Elizabeth Zimmerman's Sewn bind-off
The sewn bind off method is simple. three times the bottom edge of the blanket in (the still attached) Yyarn. Cut the yarn close to the ball and attach a darning needle (for this yarn you'll need quite a big one) slip the needle throught the first two stitches as if to purl and pull all the yarn through without dropping any of the stitches off the needle.
Then, put the needle through the first stitch as if to knit pull all your yarn through and drop that first stitch off the needle. (as seen below) That is your first bound of stitch. repeat until all stitches are bound off.
This method is takes longer than the regular bind off but it is so, so worth it. It's as stretchy as can be!
