The Process Knitter

I am definitely a process knitter. Which is a good thing, since I start a lot more projects than I actually finish. <grin> I have one ongoing project that will take me years to knit, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. It’s my Sock Yarn Afghan. I started it in the summer of 2004. I needed an interesting project to work on during a week long family reunion. I knit a lot of socks, and I’ve always wondered what to do with the little bit of yarn that’s left over. When my daughter was younger I used them to make Barbie clothes, but those days have now passed by. Since most socks I knit use hand dyed or self-patterning yarns they don’t readily lend themselves to being used together. My friend Joan knit an afghan using mitered squares (which I love) but what made it really special was that each block was bordered in black, which really tied it all together and kept it from having that patchwork look.


I made a full size afghan which turned out really well.


So I decided to start another one, using sock yarn.

As you can see, after almost two years it still isn’t all that big (that's a 12 inch ruler at the top), but I’ve gotten hours of entertainment from it already. I love finishing a square and getting out all of the colors to decide what to use next. I love remembering the original pairs of socks. It makes me feel like a pioneer woman making a quilt out of scraps of her kids’ outgrown clothes. And now my friends bring me their leftovers too, so I can look at squares and say, “My friend Joan gave me that yarn.” Or my friend Rosie, or my friend LynnM who mailed me hers from Minnesota, or my friend Cindy who brought me a bag at Maryland Sheep & Wool last weekend. It’s like a knitting scrapbook. If I ever do finish it I think I’ll have to immediately start a new one. But I don’t need to worry about that for quite a while. <grin>