Through my wanderings on Instagram, I have discovered a few brilliant souls who had escaped my notice on Ravelry or elsewhere. A case in point is the blogger Chawne (@cauchycomplete) who also blogs at Completely Cauchy
Besides turning out quilt after phenomenal, ground-breaking quilt, she is also a thoroughly original creator of knitted blankets that never fail to make me itch to cast on, right this minute. After seeing this photo two weeks ago, that was exactly what I did, in my own fashion.
Since I have been focusing almost exclusively on knitting with my stashed yarns lately, I had been pondering ways to use up leftover sock yarns and other fingering-weight bits and pieces. I gathered whatever I could find and started knitting garter stitch diamonds, striping randomly every 1, 2, 3 or 4 ridges (in no order whatsoever). Through trial and error, I ended up eliminating some colors and ended up with this bunch:
There is a bit of Koigu KPPPM in here, a little bit of Miss Babs' sock yarn, a smattering of Brown Sheep Naturespun as well and a couple of sock yarns of forgotten origin. I started with colors all over the place and ended up sticking with reds, pinks and browns, with a bit of dull green too. I eliminated bright greens and most blues, with the exception of this one teal colorway of Koigu which I progressively chose to highlight as the tip of most diamonds.
Over the past two weeks, I have been in the thralls of these "anything goes" diamonds. I am on to the 6th one now. I think I might stop at 8 and then knit striped borders to frame them properly. Or perhaps I'll put the project on hold while I wait to find myself with more stash to use up, as I have been able to dispose of quite a bit of odds and ends already.
I found a related pattern on Ravelry that gave me a starting point. For my own blocks, I start with casting on 3 stitches, then increasing on the second stitch of every row afterwards until I reach 99 stitches. I then knit one ridge (2 rows) without any increase, and start decreasing on the second stitch of every row thereafter.
For the edges, I follow the instructions on the Ravelry pattern; I knit the first stitch of each row and slip the last one with yarn in front. Assembly is going to be the real challenge. I would like to avoid a "dip" as much as possible; instead, I would like the blocks to abut each other flatly. We'll see if I can manage this.
On Instagram, the photos are pretty much "it"; few explanations are involved, and so I had to figure out why such a random assortment of colors and yarns registered as something orderly and harmonious. One single square by itself doesn't look so hot; it is the combination of four of them, with its strong diagonal lines, that makes all the colors sing together. Or not, if you are not as fond of psychedelic blankets as I am! This experimenting has been so thrilling, I can't wait to see where it leads me to.