On the edge

Last weekend I finished seaming my I Love Leftovers sock yarn blanket – all 192 squares are now joined using a LOT of mattress stitch! This is not really a very artsy shot, but it poured rain all weekend here in PA and inside was the best I could do:

Sorry about the ceiling fan. Our ceilings just aren’t high enough for this blanket – everyone is standing on stools behind it to get their arms up high enough and it still touches the floor. There was some grumbling about following this photographer’s requests, but some laughter, too.

Finishing the seaming means that now I have to ponder the edge treatment. Because I started each mitered square in black, two edges of each square (and hence two edges of the blanket) have black edges, while the other two have none. This does not please me. More black edging must be added for balance.

In order to experiment, I seamed together four of my leftover squares to use as a swatch (remember I knit 200 and only used 192 in the blanket, so there were 8 leftovers). My first idea was to use an applied garter stitch edging, which can be worked on a small number of stitches and therefore can be worked on double pointed needles. I very much liked the idea of finishing a very large blanket with very short needles. I followed the instructions from my Weigh It Shawl pattern and started to put a wide edge on here:

Interesting, but in the end, I decided it was much too wide. I was worried about how much yarn I have left (less than one ball) and determined it would be fine if I only added an edge on the two unfinished edges, making the outer black edge the same width as all the windowpane edgings. So I started the same technique again over fewer stitches, and changed a couple of little things. The hard part here was deciding which stitch to pick up from the main fabric. I tried both the “smiles” and “umbrellas” of the garter ridges and was displeased with both. My favorite bit is the top of this photo, which picks up something that is neither the smile or the umbrella (but I’m not sure what to call it):

Hmm. This edge is a bit wider than the edges of the mitered squares. Also, the garter ridges are very short, which the black edges of the mitered squares run along the long edges of the blanket. This did not look balanced.

What about an icord edge? Worth a shot? I tried both a 3-stitch icord (top) and a 4-stitch version (because I could see the main fabric through the 3-stitch one). While pretty, neither of these was balanced with the black edges of the mitered squares, either:

What about crochet? I whipped out a hook and played around with some single crochet. It was super fun but of course unlike the rest of the blanket, which did not spark any joy at all:

At this point it was becoming more and more clear that I needed to knit a very long garter edge to attach to the two unfinished blanket edges. That was the only way to get something that looked the same as the other two edges. I still held on to hope that I could work something portable, so I knit a small strip of garter and then seamed it onto the swatch using mattress stitch:

The look is right, but the strip wants to fold over because of the bulk of the mattress stitch seam. It’s too skinny to stay down flat where it belongs.

At this point, I knew I would have to pick up a gazillion stitches and knit long garter rows on. Of course, I tried it on the swatch first:

Looks good – nice and even. Even the look of the back matches the existing black edges:

I think we have a winner.

I’ll have to pick up 30-31 stitches for each square. On the longer side of the blanket (16 squares), this means picking up 480-496 stitches. On a 3.0 mm needle.

The longest fixed circular 3.0 mm needle that Knit Picks sells is 47”. I ordered two of them.

This is going to be a booger to finish, but I am so close!