All square

one

two

four

many*

Here's the first of my stash busting knitting projects completed in the internetless weeks of February. (or the broadbean wilderness as we are now calling it, thanks to Jayne's comment on my last post!)

You may remember if you've been visiting here for a while that I knitted a lot of baby clothes last year, and I also inherited  all my late sister's stash.  This left me with lots of single balls and part balls and insufficient quantity to make any garment - lots of different creams for a start and a lot of mauve which my sister loved.  When I saw this log cabin pattern it was immediately familiar - my mother used to knit similar squares when I was a child, and it seemed ideal as the centre square is only 15 stitches and 30 rows, so you can use up   quite small quantities of yarn  It's very easy to knit (all in garter stitch) so a good thing to take to hospital appointments as you can't lose track of the pattern and even on the last rectangle you only have 90 stitches to deal with.

The photos don't really do it justice as the light wasn't brilliant.  The turquoise - a bamboo wool mix with a lovely sheen, lifts it.  There are sixteen squares and each took a couple of evenings knitting - the whole thing took two evenings to sew in the ends and another to piece together.  It's double knit on size 4 needles but would work just as well in thinner or thicker yarn.  It's very heavy and as nearly all the yarns are part wool with cashmere, microfibre or bamboo, it's very warm.  The finished size is roughly 5ft square.

I've got three other things to sew up, so more to come.   Hope it's warmer where you are, it's bitterly cold here. Another hospital trip tomorrow ......

*in deference to Terry Pratchett - the way trolls count, apparently.