Hi all! I’m an inexperienced knitter who loves knitting! I’ve just started the nine patch blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting Field guide no 4. Seems simple enough…BUT, why do my squares look like rectangles?? Is it because I haven’t blocked them yet? Full confession- never blocked anything before!
All advice gratefully appreciated.
Lesley
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That’s interesting, can you post a photo?
Blocking is a mini miracle to be sure - and not to be feared.
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If you block (toss it in lukewarm water for 30 minutes, squeeze gently, drape over a towel) and it’s still a rectangle, your gauge might be different than the pattern writer’s. No fear! You can continue on and simply have a blanket with slightly different dimensions. OR you can play with needle sizes until you get a more squarish shape. OR you can start doing math to make the squares suit your gauge.
My knitting often turns out wider and shallower than anticipated. If you’re making a blanket in which all the squares are oriented the same way (Knit from bottom up), then the “aspect ratio” will be skewed in a consistent way, and you can just sew it up and have a blanket that is slightly longer in one dimension.
Oh! I just looked at the pattern. Looks like it might work best if the squares are truly square. That complicates things. The short answer is that you might have to change the number of rows in order to make sure each square is the proper length.
But definitely block/wash your squares first and see if they don’t get closer to your desire dimensions!
In garter stitch, count ridges, not rows. 1 ridge = 2 rows. For example, 10 stitches and 10 ridges (20 rows) should be a square.
yes, photo please! Diagnosis is not far behind. We’re rooting for you!
Hi Everyone! Thank you for all your replies. When I posted the problem, I was in the Kruger National Park, South Africa and the day after I posted we moved to a camp in the north which had ZERO signal! As I didn’t want to stop knitting, I continued as I had been doing as I liked the look of it whether it was right or not and once I got to the corners it all started looking right! I think it was an optical illusion that my squares were longer than they were wide. Or it was my tiny brain saying “how can 40stitches be equivalent to 80 rows!”
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