Think BIG Knitting Projects-Betty's Upper Westside Afghan
Creative Inspiration: Afghans Samples at Knitty City
Before the pain of The Point’s closing could sink in, I dropped by Knitty City to hear Betty talk about her afghan. One thing that Knitty City does a wonderful job is displaying samples of various knitting projects as well as colorful swatches to entice you to use the fibers.
I arrived just in time to see Betty proudly displaying the beautiful piece which now covers her bed. Being late to the presentation, I didn’t get the full details about the original of the project.
While Betty had started with a rough idea of the color scheme, she modified it on the fly and added various squares as she wanted to try new things. There are two squares, one with a B for Betty and one with a D for Dick, her husband. The square that caught my attention was the one with the state of New York. Betty got the graph of the state from a playbill! Since Betty doesn’t like intarsia, the color work is embroidered not knit.
Betty explaining afghan squares in detail at Knitty City
Betty's show & tell afghan at Knitty City
To create a sense of unity, Betty framed each square with a mitered garter stitch border. Further, to create a more sturdy blanket and reduce wear and tear on the seams, she did a three needle bind-off so that it created an artistic border ridge on the good side.
While I find the idea of knitting an afghan daunting and likely to cause me to stop knitting, I think that this approach of creating multiple areas where the knitter can test new formats and/or have a small area to experiment is a great idea. I’ve been keeping my swatches of various sizes and colors in hopes of one day seaming them together.
BTW-There’s a great write up in the current issue of Vogue Knitting about Knitty City.
I wasn’t able to be there that evening–but, I did manage to see the afghan. Isn’t it just amazing?!
That’s a great idea to save the swatches for a future afghan.