It helps to talk about it

When I went to bed on Wednesday night, I was stewing about the border for my blanket. I had eight sections, so I could use a border pattern with eight rows, and it would fit. But I had 53 stitches in each section, so if I wanted something divisible by 10 or 12 or 18 or 20... I'd be fudging it for sure.

But, I had to leave those troubles and woes and take a small project (heck, let's start a Lopi hat) to Alterknit to meet Heather Thursday morning. And I have no pictures of Heather and me in the shop, but you can see her Central Park Hoodie here! This is a story of people meeting sort of because of blogs, but mainly because of real-life mutual acquaintances -- her professor was my co-knitter and fellow student about a million years ago. And I re-bumped into her in a yarn shop in London, Ontario, because my brother moved to London last year. But we also re-met because she and I both read Mason Dixon Knitting. So. Six degrees of separation and all that.

So, gab gab chat chat knit knit... and I was telling her my border story, and ding! A lightbulb went on in my head and I realised I could do one more increase round, have 54 stitches in each section, and be able to use a 16 or 18 or 12 row pattern, and now the possibilities are endless! I also figured out I can take the whole dang thing off the circular needle onto a piece of yarn and just use a couple of short dpns to work the edge. Oh, I was so happy! When I came home, I managed the increase round, plus one more to cover the yarnovers, and even had time to pick the border pattern from the bazillions available in Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the Edge before dashing off to get the kids. I'm doing one called Princess Anne's Lace, which is quite wide (13 stitches to start) and not very fussy. It's such a plain, solid blanket, that a floofy edge seemed a bit silly. And I've now done 3 repeats, only 24 to go! Ack.


And the moral of the story is, go out and discuss your knitting with real people, just in case you are being stumped by something that really has a very simple solution....