Thinking long term

It’s about time for a check-in on the I Love Leftovers project, a blanket I’m making with leftover sock yarn:

I started this project back in October of 2015. I have made a lot of socks since I started knitting in 2002. While I don’t consider leftover yarn to really be part of the stash, it kind of is… especially when the leftover balls are multiplied by the number of socks I’ve made. My inspiration project is this blanket made of mitered squares. It uses the color purple to unify it, but I went with the rainbow approach since I wanted to use as many of my leftovers as possible.

I am knitting the edge of each square in black to create a windowpane effect in the final project, and I’ll also add a black border. Right now I have 121 squares. If I filled in this rectangle with 9 more, the project measures about 46”x62”. Of course, that doesn’t account for blocking or the border, which will make it bigger. It also doesn’t account for seaming, which would reduce size if I use mattress stitch or increase size if I use a crochet bind (I think Steven did this for one of his blankets?). I’ll have to fiddle around and see what I like later.

Initially I was thinking about 200 squares. I still have plenty of leftovers to use, so I’ll just keep going.