Projects
Logalong: Garter Squares and Miters
Dear Kay,
I made an emergency pom pom repair this weekend. As you can see, it was a dire situation.
Before:
After:
I mention this a) because this is a knitting website and we consider pom poms an allied craft to knitting and b) because digging around my stash for yarn took me to a deep, hidden zone where I unearthed—o joy!—a log cabin project I’d totally forgotten.
It has been heartening to see all the long-marinating log cabin projects coming out of storage to be finished for the Fringe and Friends Log Cabin Make-along. (The Instagram hashtag #fringeandfriendslogalong is getting juicy.) In our opinion, you’re not really knitting if you don’t have at least a couple of blankets half done, somewhere in your house. The half-finished blanket is just one of those necessary things when you’re a knitter.
One obvious great thing about a half-finished blanket is that I burned out on it so hard, back when, that I put that whole searing, head-busting experience completely out of my memory. I mean, I don’t even know what decade it was when I started this thing. It is brand new to me, as I gaze upon it and marvel at the mix of garter stitch blocks and mitered blocks.
What a ton of fun! What a glorious stash buster! What genius made this thing? Where’s a size 7 needle? I’m going in.
The thing I’d like to leave you with is the idea that a miter doesn’t have to be square. I am beginning to vaguely recall that I started this blanket with the idea of combining garter stitch and mitered squares. But, pretty soon, I got into making rectangle miters, skinny miters, tiny li’l miters. Which allow you to freehand a blanket with little worry about Making It All Fit Properly.
Nothing has to fit at all. You can pick up a batch of stitches anywhere you like.
Before long, adding squares in a festive and folkloric fashion, you’ll see all these 90-degree angles where you could stick a new square. And with miters, you just pick up along the two sides of a 90-degree angle, and it lets you crank a miter that fits whatever space you need it to.
If you’re still on the fence about joining the Logalong, this is one of those ideas that is wildly open ended. Our Field Guide No. 4: Log Cabin, explains how to make both garter stitch blocks and miters. And if you are like many knitters, you have a stash of yarn that is patiently awaiting its destiny.
But if you don’t happen to have a pile of worsted weight yarn in a dozen shades, well, we can help with that too. I’m still motoring away on my Tahki Donegal Tweed sequence log cabin blanket, and it continues to be a truly great yarn.
Would be excellent for a garter-miter freestyle blanket.
A dozen shades over in the Shop, tweedy and rustic and grand.
Love,
Ann
I love this, Ann! What a great bit of color madness and yet it all fits together. Makes want to fish out all the dribs and drabs in my own stash and get started on a second blanket.
I’m coming in! Wound a dozen or so skeins of vintage Cascade 220 over the weekend. The Lounge and the hashtag both were helpful and inspirational… mama deserves her own blanket (having knit one for each daughter plus the Brotherman!) XXO
This blanket has a lot of Cascade 220 in it. This is one of those situations where even a tiny leftover ball of yarn can find its destiny. Go for it, Maggi!
Hi Ann,
I LOVE the blanket, and especially the inspiration that you can pick up and make all sorts of different sized mitered shapes any-old-where you want. Now that gets my knitting mojo going!
Really like your idea of sequence knitting log cabin too.
I’m curious, what is the knitting behind your sequence knitting in the photo there?
Thanks!
Hi Tempe! I’ll be writing about that gray piece soon. I made it when we were creating Field Guide No. 5: Sequences–it appears in there. It is basically the Classic Log Cabin Dishcloth from Field Guide No. 4: Log Cabin, only made with Lamb’s Pride Worsted and made with sequences for each patch instead of garter sttich. I kept adding blocks of 3″ until I got to a size I wanted.
Love it!!
This is truly spectacular! What a find! (Frankly, I can’t believe you forgot about it in the first place!)
Ann,
Is there any intarsia involved in this beautiful pattern or does it just involve the garter blocks with miters?
Love it! Thx.
No intarsia–I started it without any plan in mind at all. I had a big pile of leftover yarn and probably spent more time as I went thinking about the next color more than thinking about what the shape would be. I do think that at a certain point I started aiming for an even edge, because I didn’t want the edges to be irregular, so that started to be a factor: getting a rectangle out of all this.
I am so relieved to know that this is not something you started Jan 1, and had already completed! (my first thought when i saw that picture). As someone who loves 1) totally random, and 1) nothing matching, this is my ideal blanket. Of course I will have to make one…someday.
You have a typo in your hash tag. (Once a copy editor, always a copy editor., LOL) Anyway, you have logalog instead of logalong, so the link works but someone typing it might make a mistake.
OMG but don’t you wish the hashtag actually was logalog? XDXDXD
Tahnk yuo!
Bahaha!
Tanks, Ann. I’m really enjoying the hashtag postings, by the way, even though I am not joining in on the knitting.
I see I even had a punctuation typo in my own original post. Darned iPad.
This I call synchronicity – finding a totally forgotten log cabin project right in the midst of a log cabin knitalong where you are so much involved with. I think it’s great! And the idea that a miter doesn’t have to be square is fantastic. Seems so obvious but I’ve never thought about it.
You just gave my log-cabining a kickstart. I got bogged down in following the ‘rules’ but I’m going to loosen up and go freestyle. I hope to run into you on Sat at VKL!
I know I say this all the time but this project just makes me shout I LOVE KNITTING KNITTING IS THE BEST THING EVER.
YES!! And I want to leave the hat I am knitting to one side and START ANOTHER blanket!!
Somewhere, I’ve got a bunch of miter squares all knit up. I remember laying them out on the floor in San Antonio. What happened to them then??? That must have been like 2006, since I moved to Iowa in 2007 – it definitely pre-dated Ravelry…. I wonder where they are now?? And if they would like to be put together, perhaps in some non-traditional fashion????
Happily, I have two partially finished blankets. I guess that makes me An Official Knitter (but I already knew that.)
Hat repair definitely a success! Do you use a pom pom maker or do it freestyle? Gorgeous forgotten blanket! Thanks for advice on your
Pom!
Love this blanket. Until you mentioned some recall if it, I was starting to wonder if someone stashed it in your closet when you weren’t looking. “Ha-got rid of that nagging UFO!”
What? WHAT?! A mitered square doesn’t have to be square? Mind. Blown.
I wasn’t going to logalong because I’ve got brioche fever something fierce, but now I think I’m going to make at least a couple squares to play with the different blocks in Field Guide 4. Your new pickup technique is nibbling at my subconscious, and I have to know about it.
January is flying by already!
Fantastic blanket. It reminds me of the first thing I made when I was a kid – a blanket comprised entirely of garter stitch squares and rectangles that I made (with a lot of help from my mum and Gran) for my beloved dog. We didn’t knit about log cabin then so a grown up would cast on for me, I’d knit until I had almost run out of a colour or got bored and then they’d cast off and we’d start again with a new colour. Every time we had a visitor, they’d see me knitting and ask to join in. I think, by the time we’d finished, just about every female family member and friend, and quite a few men, had all joined in and made a square over a cup of tea. My mum then crocheted it together and added a beautiful and, now I look back, impossibly elaborate, crochet border. Our dog had the more ludicrously fancy blanket in his basket but he seemed to love it almost as much as we did – he snuggled himself up into it for years until it finally fell apart, not long before he did.
So many happy memories knitted into that blanket, and it used up all mum’s old odds and ends of yarn. Well almost – every now and then when I’m deep stash diving I’ll spot a tiny ball of something that I know is left over from my late 80s early knitting forays. Never fails to make me smile.
Ann, such a find! The colors are great. I’m jealous but can’t wait to see how you finish it off. 🙂
That is amazing. My half finished blanket is nowhere near so fun. It’s the classic: a baby blanket for a kid who is about to start high school.
Ann, I made a similar small blanket for my great niece when she was 1 or 2. She’s now 20. I suspect I got the idea from someone on the Rowan forum. Could that someone have been you?
Love, Tessa
Tessa! So good to hear from you–it’s entirely likely that I got the idea from YOU on the Rowan forum.
Can you believe the little babies are now 20? I look at my boys in wonderment. How did THAT happen?
I am a solitary knitter so I rarely know what constitutes ‘really being a knitter’ but when I read your blog I realize I definitely belong to the tribe. First it was dishcloths, now it’s blankets. I have a couple unfinished that use up scraps, or fulfill quilting (can one belong to multiple tribes?) fantasties (in which scrapiness is usually an element).
Wow! I have a garter stitch blanket (in two pieces so far) just marinating in my UFO pile! Time to pull it out and see what can be done. Thanks!
Ann, can you recommend any other fun creative podcasts to listen to, while knitting?