Knitting for Therapy

I was a little surprised by how low-energy I've been today; I'd hoped for more recovery progress. I went to bed early last night, and got a good solid night of sleep (with some very strange dreams, but that's par for the course), and yet I didn't feel back to normal, so I took it easy. This morning I was mostly sitting around reading, not that there's anything wrong with that, and by 1:00 was ready to watch the Bruins game, which was entertaining and they won for me (sorry, Kate)(they beat the Flyers, ahem). I also started some new knitting.

Last year, I bought a kit, pattern and yarn to make a blanket, the Hue Shift afghan, in all the colors of the rainbow. It's a simple pattern of mitered squares, which is a technique I haven't tried before, and in fact I had to google it to "get" the concept. Once it clicked, easy! I cast on the first square, and got into the second before I stopped to consider the situation: not the way it was turning out, which was fine, but the size. Yes, it's the dreaded g-word: gauge.

See, one fault of the pattern, in my opinion, is that it skips the simple, obvious way to give the desired gauge: by the size of each square. What could be easier than starting the first square and seeing if it's a certain size? Instead, it tells you to aim for 21.5 stitches over four inches, and as I never feel comfortable measuring gauge that accurately, I wasn't sure how far off I was, or which way to adjust. A bunch of the people who have made it, too many to ignore, mentioned on Ravelry how they ran out of yarn, or came close, and given the color-specific nature of the design, that's not something I want to have to worry about. I'd rather have a slightly smaller blanket than be sweating the grams at the end! A couple of the Ravellers mentioned trying to get their squares to be four and a half inches, as though that was the goal, and mine was coming out at five.

So, start over now before I got too far, that's fine with me. But how to tweak it, exactly? Change needle size, or change number of stitches? In the end, I decided to do both, but instead of ripping the first one out, I'm starting at a different corner, to use a different color yarn, so I can compare them and see how different they actually are.

For take 2A, instead of the 49 stitches on size US4 needles I used in take 1, was 41 stitches on US6s. To my amusement, this came out at exactly five inches again! If I'd been trying to get them the same, it wouldn't have, I'm sure. Anyway, I hadn't made the whole square, and I ripped it out and cast on 35 for take 2B; this seems to be better, more like four inches across. I'd rather err on the side that doesn't involve risk of running out of yarn, so that's fine. I think I like the drape of this better, too, but I'm going to make another square before I decide to rip the first one. Further updates as events warrant.

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Oh, by the way, I remembered what it was that I was going to post last night: something a friend posted on Facebook yesterday:

That was it!