Knitfilter: could I turn this ITR throw into four joined squares?

October 31, 2019 1:50 PM

I am 3.5 skeins into this pattern from Ravelry. I am getting sort of tired of doing extremely long rows and wondering about making four squares and grafting them but I have questions.

So at this point I'm knitting a giant square on circular needles and can't quite see what the edges are going to look like. There are a few pics of finished projects on Rav that don't totally help (the one by the person who wrote the pattern has a picot bind-off, which I definitely don't want, and which I think obscures quite what the shape of the edge is.) I guess the main thing to know is that the majority of the pattern is feather and fan/old shale.*

At this point I have nearly 300 stitches on the needles. I'm kind of tired of knitting such long rows. If I can't think of anything else, I'll just finish it, because I think it's a nice pattern, but could I instead finish out the skein and then do four more squares and then graft them? I'm not super accomplished at grafting but have done Kitchener a couple of times. I'm mostly not clear on whether the edges would be shaped in a way that this would work at all.

Any opinions? Thanks!

*I'm not sure these are exactly the same, but close enough for these purposes. Repeats of: Y2togx3, [K1, YO] x6, Y2togx3.

posted by less of course to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (4 answers total)

Best answer: The wavy pattern is not really going to make the edges graftable, or even seamable, sorry to say. It might help to keep in mind that even with long rows, it comes down to the same number of stitches. Four smaller squares would not knit up any faster (though you wouldn't have to lug so much throw around as you work).
posted by rikschell at 2:05 PM on October 31, 2019 [3 favorites]

It looks more like knitting four triangles (with decreases on every row or every other row) would work better rather than squares. But I'd have to examine the pattern more closely to figure out a decent alternate.
posted by acidnova at 2:18 PM on October 31, 2019

If you graft them, you're forcing the grafted edges to be straight-ish and you'll either lose some of the waviness in the pattern and/or have weird bulgy grafts under a fair amount of stress (depending on the gauge and yarn you're using). Remember that you're going to have to graft very long rows if you proceed this way, as well.

You could whip up a couple test swatches and see if you find the grafting process and result livable.

You could also do four trapezoidal pieces to graft around the center, which should give you tidier grafting that keeps the pattern plus seaming somewhat concealed in the miters. But you're signing on for some long grafts and provisional cast ons...
posted by momus_window at 2:27 PM on October 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ok, I think I'll just soldier on. I made another throw of comparable size but maybe less boringly repetitive. (The thing that gets so crazy-making is that the first skein gets you a lot of diameter/width and then every successive one gets you less and less!)
posted by less of course at 2:47 PM on October 31, 2019