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Friday, February 1, 2013

FNWF...and I'm 'on a roll'...

Last night I joined in with Cheryll's Friday Night with Friends and, on the strength of having just finished sewing together donated squares into a useful rug for the charity knitting group, K4BN, I thought I'd 'attack' another pile. These donated squares were actually knitted rectangles, approx 19cm by 14cm; but on closer inspection yesterday I found that relatively few were this size...many were quite different, especially in width.

Originally I had hundreds of these rectangles but in October last year, I did an 'unMarialike' thing...I took half the rectangles back to a Knit and Natter. Being all white/off white or beige and there being so many, I felt overwhelmed. I know that I hurt the woman who had given them to me, by taking them back. J said, 'I gave them to you because you always take photos of the finished items'...gulp......I still had a lot of rectangles though, and I promised her that I would photograph what I managed to make. I have 2 rugs planned and started one last year and have all the 'rows' in ziplock bags.

But yesterday I started work on the other one...
Earlier, I had started crocheting the rectangles into rows. But it became obvious that, with the differences in sizes, that I would not have enough white rectangles to make a throw.


After again sorting the rectangles by size, I found that I only had enough for  4 rows plus a few  that didn't make up the full row of 6.



Also while crocheting the rectangles together, I encountered a small problem. The knitter has a different way of casting on and off compared to me...that's ok except the stitches started unravelling as I worked at joining them...so that part's not ok!Lol




 
There were no ends left, so I used a tapestry needle threaded with white yarn and stitched the ends so they wouldn't unravel. Originally I'd planned to add some crocheted flowers to 'dress up' the plain white, using the same variegated yarn that I was joining the rectangles with.

So I had to have another strategy to make this throw a decent size. I decided to insert a row of 'granny squares' using the same variegated yarn.

So that's why last night, I crocheted 10 smallish squares to brighten up the plain white of these rectangles...I then crocheted the strip of squares on to the 2 rows that I had already crocheted together. By joining on the right side, I felt it gave some colour to the item.

Now I have quite a few of the rectangles left, that are too wide/long. After I sew on another 2 'white' rows and a row each of 'granny squares, top and bottom, I'm going to see whether I can make a border with the other rectangles. If that doesn't work, it will be a deep crocheted border instead.

The bag with all the wrong size rectangles.
And that's what I did on FNWF. :-)

6 comments:

Paul Forster said...

Love the colour combinations, Maria! Enjoy your retirement from teaching. I'm off to school Monday to face a new bunch of kids.

Anita said...

Hi Maria,
Knitting and crocheting are one of my most favourite hobbies...cant stop myself!!! FNwF has helped me to do some stitching and other crafts that I love but I have to be truthful.....my hands feel like they are cheating on my knitting with my sewing!!!!
Cheers, Anita.

Naturally Carol said...

Adding the purple and pink to the white really lifts it..well done!

Maria said...

I like what you have done with your blocks by adding the nice colours....

Quilting Chemist (Danette) said...

Pretty variegated yarn and granny squares make the white squares look wonderful.

Anonymous said...

The granny squares really set it off Maria.
It was lovely to meet you yesterday. So sorry that I didn't think to have a photo of us both together. Just finished blogging about the workshop. I really enjoyed it, such a nice bunch of people.