{"id":13009,"date":"2020-03-02T19:32:27","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T00:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=13009"},"modified":"2020-03-02T19:32:27","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T00:32:27","slug":"my-fandoms-blanket-nine-squares-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2020\/03\/02\/my-fandoms-blanket-nine-squares-in\/","title":{"rendered":"My fandoms blanket: nine squares in!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> mentioned a few posts back about discovering a passion for knitting about six months ago. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to believe that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only been six months \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had knitting needles and yarn flying through my fingers for years now. In between all the mittens and hats and socks and other projects I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been doing, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been working diligently on my Geek Square blanket. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got nine squares done, and I figure I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m aiming for a blanket that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 6×4 squares, or 24 squares in total.<\/p>\n

\"fandom<\/p>\n

They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the order I knitted them, from first at the bottom right to most recent at the top left: an aperture (from a video game called Portal, but I chose it for the association with my other passion, the camera); Hitchhiker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Guide to the Galaxy (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Panic!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was almost the tagline for this blog); 20-sided die from Dungeons & Dragons; Batman (for Beloved, my comic book guy); the Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter; the Hyrulean Shield from Zelda; Mario Kart; the logo from my favourite D&D playcast Critical Role<\/a>; and the dragon ampersand from Dungeons & Dragons.<\/p>\n

I might get it done some time this year \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but, probably not.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, I stumbled across the geek-a-long blanket project<\/a> when I was literally days into my new knitting habit. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that double-knitting was considered challenging, so I followed a few tutorials and figured it out pretty quickly. Generally, a double-knitted square will have one set of colours on one side and the inverse on the other side, as you knit and purl double strands, throwing one colour to one side with a knit stitch and the other to the opposite side with a purl stitch. For the d20 square, I needed to figure out how to do \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extreme\u00e2\u20ac\u009d double knitting, where the two sides are different. So I did. For the first few squares, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d count up the number of stitches in each colour and write them all out longhand as a road map for myself, but now I can follow along fairly easily with just a printout of the pattern and a ruler.<\/p>\n

\"notes<\/p>\n

You might note that there are more D&D squares than anything else, in no small part because after a 30 year hiatus the game has become a big part of my life again \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely a post or three about THAT in the near future! It was the d20 pattern that led me to the Geek-a-long blanket in the first place, via Google Image search. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been doing a knit-a-long blanket for the last several years, which is why they have such a great bank of patterns covering all sorts of geeky goodness, and I just found out that this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theme is ENTIRELY Dungeons & Dragons related \u00e2\u20ac\u201c talk about serendipity!<\/p>\n

For the Deathly Hallows (the triangle and circle pattern, from Harry Potter) and the Critical Role logo (the CR with a sword) I designed my own pattern using a website called Chart-Minder<\/a>. The next one in my queue is also one I designed myself; can you tell what it is? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably start this square some time this week.<\/p>\n

\"Millennium<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a loose idea of where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going with the rest of the squares. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be covering Star Wars in the next square, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got ideas for the Princess Bride, Pac Man, Pokemon, Minecraft, and a few other family fandoms. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve even got a spreadsheet with potential squares, what colours I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d need and what yarns I have in my stash. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to see what new D&D ideas appear and take those into account, too!<\/p>\n

The only part that really concerns me is the joining of the squares. First, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be hella task just in and of itself. And some of those cast ons and cast offs are so tight I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be able to get a crochet hook in there, whatever method of joining the squares I use. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be coming back to you guys for advice before I take on that task, I think. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not even sure what colour to use to join them all up; I think black is the likeliest choice.<\/p>\n

I figure if I’m six months and nine squares into the project, at least I’m invested enough to keep working on it. Next stop, Millennium Falcon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned a few posts back about discovering a passion for knitting about six months ago. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to believe that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only been six months \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had knitting needles and yarn flying through my fingers for years now. In between all the mittens and hats and socks and other projects … Continue reading “My fandoms blanket: nine squares in!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crafty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13009"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13015,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13009\/revisions\/13015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}