Winter Wheat Girasole

Tags

brooklyntweed, girasole, madelinetosh, shawl, yellow

It was a very busy fall so I didn’t get a whole lot of Christmas knitting done. My ruby red Juneberry Triangle for my grandma and this project were the extent of it actually! And what do you know? I knit another Brooklyntweed pattern for my other grandma (it’s all about the symmetry). I decided to knit my grandma the shawl version of Girasole and I wanted to work it in a very cheerful color – thus, yellow! When Emily visited a couple of months ago we went to Webs (yes, I actually live sort of close to the store now!!) and I fell in love with a beautiful golden Madelinetosh sock called Winter Wheat. Once the idea of knitting Girasole for my grandma formed in my head, the Madelinetosh sock was the only yarn that would suit.

Knitting the shawl version of the pattern was very different from the giant blanket I knit for Emily and Eric’s wedding a couple of years ago – mostly because you don’t have to lug around such a mass of fabric when you’re knitting the shawl as opposed to the blanket! I think I fell even more in love with the pattern this time around and I am resolved to make one for myself! The shawl was also a lot easier to block than the blanket (which ended up, like, 9 feet in diameter).

I think the sunflower pattern looks amazing in yellow and I’m so in love with how it turned out! The Madelinetosh sock was the perfect yarn for the shawl, and after blocking it has the most wonderful weight and feel. Love, love, love.

 

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Circumference = 2πr

Tags

blocking, girasole

I’ve gotten a few questions about how I blocked the massive blanket known as Girasole (AKA Top Secret Wedding Present), so I thought I’d talk about the process and show a couple of visuals to explain.  I’ll refresh your memory with a pretty picture:

Seeing as Girasole is a giant circle, and I’m a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my knitting, I had to formulate a plan of attack for this monster.  Here’s how it went . . .  After soaking the blanket and getting rid of excess water by rolling it up in a towel, I placed the center of the circle in the middle of the office floor and stuck a few pins in to keep it there.  I used a couple of pins through the hole in the end of my tape measure to secure it in place, then started pinning the points out – on my first try it soon became painfully obvious that to get Girasole to open up the way I wanted it to I was going to have to pin out the points 4.5′ from the center instead of 3.5′!  Insert unintentional step of removing previously placed pins and starting over.  Readjusting my tape measure to 4.5′, I began pinning out the points again, starting at 12 o’clock, then 6 o’clock, then 3 o’clock, then 9.  After that, it was simply a matter of pinning out points halfway between previously placed pins, always placing one pin and then placing a corresponding pin on the opposite side of the circle.  Admittedly, this means an unreasonable amount of walking around a nine foot circle, but the results are worth it!  Take a look at the whole thing stretched out and taking up the whole floor . . .

Can you see my improvisation in the upper right corner?  I ran out of straight pins with about fifteen points left to stretch out, so I, um, used wooden skewers from the kitchen.  I’m not embarrassed – it totally worked! : )  And look what a beautiful edging it turned out to be . . .

Girasole

Tags

blanket, brooklyntweed, emily, girasole, wedding

The secret wedding present is revealed!  After not being able to discuss my knitting for a while, I’m so excited to share my experience with a wonderful pattern written by an amazing designer – Girasole by Jared Flood (aka Brooklyntweed).  Here’s the finished project all laid out and in the hands of Eric and Emily.  This pattern was wonderful, intuitive and I would knit it over and over again.  (Um, yes, I know it’s huge.  It’s actually about 9″ in diameter.  This could explain the issue discussed in the next paragraph.)

I honestly loved knitting this blanket, the whole project went smoothly, with the only issue being the amount of yarn I had.  I used the yarn the pattern called for – Cascade pastaza.  This yarn is a beautiful wool/llama mix with a delightful weight.  I ordered an extra skein of the yarn just to be safe (you don’t want to run out on such an important project) and reveled in my forethought (“what an experienced knitter I am, I ordered more than enough yarn and I’ll end up with extra for a hat or something”).  Well, it turned out that I was being slightly overconfident and I ran out of my extra yarn a little more than halfway through the knitted on edging.  Hmm . . . I’m slightly embarrassed to say that my heart was racing until I was able to log in to Webs and buy another hank.  Once it arrived, I quickly finished up the edging and then did a happy dance celebrating the completion of the most massive project I’ve ever attempted.  Oh, and not to give you a heart attack, but this is how much yarn I had left after casting off:

What follows is a picture essay on my project as it progressed (I took photos after completing each chart, which was sometimes at night, so I apologize for poor picture quality).

Chart A:

Chart B:

Chart C:

Chart D (we’re at 640 sts per round at this point folks!):

Chart E (oooh, it’s growing!):

Chart F:

Chart G (quite a mess of yarn at this point, huh?):

Starting the edging:

And now for the finale . . .

Goodbye Girasole!  I loved our time together, but now I want you to go and warm the household of one of my best friends, Emily, and my new friend, Eric.  Keep them warm throughout the years of their happy marriage (and also, try not to itch Emily too much).