Rams and Yowes

Finally finished my Rams and Yowes blanket. It's such a beautiful design I really enjoyed the centre fair isle section.

Having a look at the beautiful blankets others have done, there seemed to be a bit of an issue with wavy borders which I definitely wanted to avoid. So…

When I cut the steek, I steam blocked a section of the blanket to get my gauge (I didn’t bother doing a swatch to begin with). My gauge was 28 sts by 32 rows in 4”. I also made a small garter stitch swatch which was 26 sts in 4”. With that sort of gauge difference, then a 1 to 1 pick up would definitely give a wavy edge.

On the cast on and cast off edges, I picked up at a rate of 13 in 14 sts and on the steeked edges 13 in 16 sts (pu 4, skip 1, pu5, skip 1, pu4). So in the end I picked up 684 sts instead of 780; which is a huge difference. I don’t have wavy edges, though. Hopefully you can see in the before blocking picture the borders look relatively flat.

Before blocking

After blocking

I did a w&t for the border so I was knitting all the time which sped things up. I considered doing the No-Purl Garter stitch which I would have done but didn’t really want to tie in double the amount of ends, especially since there was only 4 rows per colour.

Before sewing the border down, I added a little bit of embroidery in chain stitch. My first attempt was very dodgy, so I ended up writing out the pattern on some parchment and basted that to the border and embroidered through it. Then just pulled the paper out after and it worked well.

I had a big issue after sewing the border down to the inside. I just sat and did it and pulled my sewing tight without checking anything. So when I’d finished I pulled the blanket into shape and proceed to snap all my sewing. I had to redo it without pulling it as tight.

The I-cord border was definitely worth the effort. It really finished it off nicely. Now to place strategically over my favourite chair...