My fandoms blanket: nine squares in!

I mentioned a few posts back about discovering a passion for knitting about six months ago. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been six months – I feel like I’ve 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’ve been doing, I’ve been working diligently on my Geek Square blanket. I’ve got nine squares done, and I figure I’m aiming for a blanket that’s 6×4 squares, or 24 squares in total.

fandom knit blanket squares

They’re 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’s Guide to the Galaxy (“Don’t Panic!” 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; and the dragon ampersand from Dungeons & Dragons.

I might get it done some time this year – but, probably not.

As I mentioned, I stumbled across the geek-a-long blanket project when I was literally days into my new knitting habit. I didn’t 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 “extreme” double knitting, where the two sides are different. So I did. For the first few squares, I’d 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.

notes and yarn and blanket square

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 – there’s 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’ve 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’s theme is ENTIRELY Dungeons & Dragons related – talk about serendipity!

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. The next one in my queue is also one I designed myself; can you tell what it is? I’ll probably start this square some time this week.

Millennium Falcon pattern

I’ve got a loose idea of where I’m going with the rest of the squares. I’ll be covering Star Wars in the next square, and I’ve got ideas for the Princess Bride, Pac Man, Pokemon, Minecraft, and a few other family fandoms. I’ve even got a spreadsheet with potential squares, what colours I’d need and what yarns I have in my stash. We’ll have to see what new D&D ideas appear and take those into account, too!

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

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!

“Checkmate, nihilism!”

I turned 50 back in August, and for my birthday I asked for some supplies to re-learn how to knit. I wanted to take up knitting for a handful of reasons, but mostly it was to have something other than mindlessly surfing screens in my downtime, and because I have always been a maker.

I had originally learned how to knit when I was a kid; there was a lady in our neighbourhood named Trudy who taught me, when I was about 10. The 70s and 80s were a different time – I don’t know how I met Trudy, a single woman with no kids, or how I ended up friends with her, but I have clear memories of going to her house, alone, and her teaching me to knit. The only knit item I remember ever finishing was a long red and white scarf for my high school boyfriend. I have carried with me for years a bag of yarn and scraps were supposed to be a blanket in the late 80s or early 90s, but that was the last time I’d knit, aside from teaching Tristan how to do basic garter stitch a few years ago.

So, I asked for a set of double-pointed needles and some acrylic yarn to try to make a fingerless glove pattern I’d seen on Ravelry. I’d never used DPNs before, but that’s what Google is for. (How did we ever learn things before Google?) Then I googled long-tail cast on, and M1L and M1R and how to pick up stitches, and pretty much every other thing in that pattern except the basic knit stitch that I knew. I even made a test glove before I used the “good” acrylic, which turned out to be a horrible stiff yarn that vacillated randomly in thickness and I hated by the end of the first glove.

Long before I finished the fingerless gloves, that I had by that point fallen out of love with but was determined to finish anyway, I discovered a project that made my heart sing: the Geek-along blanket. It was a series of double-knit squares that you could knit and join into your own blanket. There were squares for D&D, for Terry Pratchett, for Star Wars and Star Trek and Harry Potter. There were Zelda squares and Pac Man squares and even a Douglas Adams square. Oh yes, this was a project I had to try. So I learned to double-knit, and then when I found a pattern with a d20 from Dungeons and Dragons with a natural 20 on one side and a natural 1 on the other side of the square, I learned to double-knit while throwing different patterns to either side, also called extreme double knitting. I’ve got eight squares done so far, aiming for 24, but other projects keep getting in the way!

Like thrummed mittens – I’ve made two sets of those, plus some thrummed slippers for Granny for Christmas. I went on a hat-making spree and made slouchy beanies for my brother for his birthday, and for Beloved and Simon for Christmas. I designed (!) and made a Link (from Zelda) hat for Tristan. And I finally finished those first fingerless gloves. Though I didn’t love them, Lucas did, and he wore them all through the autumn until it was too cold for fingerless gloves. And I chose a new pattern and made a nicer set for myself in fancy Malabrigo yarn. Oh, and I made a Baby Yoda, as one does.

Projects I've finished so far
Finished projects to date – August 2019 to February 2020

But! The thing that I most wanted to try and most feared was socks. I looked at pattern after pattern. I was intimidated by the heel flap, by picking up those stitches. Eventually, I settled on a pattern that seemed both tried and true and straightforward, and I set off to make socks.

Back in the fall, I came across this quote about knitting on Reddit, via Tumblr:

“The thing about knitting is that it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it. Like okay, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now you’re foot’s warm.

Checkmate, nihilism!”

Checkmate nihilism indeed. I not only made a sock, I made TWO SOCKS. Take that, second sock syndrome!

So I’m, um, sort of obsessed with knitting now. I’m currently in the middle of a simple little hat to practice stranded colourwork, because why not? And I have 16 blanket squares left to make, and then (**weeps**) join. And I’ve stashed the yarn to make at least four more pairs of socks. And several hats. And I bought the pattern for a Cowichan sweater that I opened when I downloaded it, took one look at, and said, “oh crap, I am not ready for this yet. Not even close.”

But, maybe next week?