Project Notebook: Swirly Sqaure

The last week has been a lot about a lot of different works in progress, and one of them’s a bit of a secret so I don’ have that much to show but I can show you the beginning, as well as a cool technique for making blankets or afghan squares — or squares for anything, really — from the center out.

There are several different ways to do this (and you should check out the book Knitting Block by Block by Nicky Epstein if you’re a fan of funky blocks of all sorts of construction methods) but the one I’m using involves yarn overs at four points in every round (or should that be square?).

To begin, cast on 8 stitches and divide onto 4 double-pointed knitting needles. Join in the round and knit in the front and back of every stitch on the first round. This will be incredibly fiddly and may take you a few tries to get it done without twisting or having the stitches fall off your needles. (You could also cheat and do the cast on and the increase and then divide onto 4 needles and join in the round, because you’re going to have to sew the center closed anyway.)

At the beginning of each needle on each round, perform a yarn over. When you get too many stitches for your DPNs, change to a circular and place markers at the points where you make your yarn overs, using a different color to mark the beginning/end of the round.

You can keep going like this indefinitely, so long as you have a long enough needle. Mine is actually quite a bit bigger than this right now, but as I said, it’s surprise knitting, but I’ll share the pattern when it’s done.

What’s on or recently off your needles? I’d love to hear about it.

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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